The UEFA European Football Championships, better known as the Euros, is the first major crowed-attended, international event to be staged across Europe as the continent emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Numerous pandemic restrictions remain in place across Europe, including strict quarantine procedures, that make it difficult for the cross-border travel that is typical for the event. Matches such as England's game against Ukraine held in Rome that would typically mean a boom for hotel performance are sparking a relatively muted performance boost, according to data from CoStar's hospitality analytics firm STR.

London’s Wembley Stadium, traditionally the home of the England national team, has hosted six England games so far and is set to host the semifinal on July 7 and final on July 11.

Its fifth hosted match, on June 29, saw more than 40,000 attendees watch England beat Germany 2-0, the first time England have beaten Germany in the knock out phases of a major soccer tournament for almost 55 years.

According to STR, within a three-mile radius of the stadium, occupancy for the night of that game reached 68.2%.

Hotel demand is noticeably higher than what an urban market like London has seen since the onset of the pandemic, but hoteliers in the city say it's still a far cry from the massive demand spikes they would have seen in more typical circumstances.

Average daily rate for the same day was 109.06 pounds sterling ($150.42) and revenue per available room was 74.40 pounds sterling. In comparison, year to date through June 29, average occupancy across all of London was 37.5%, ADR was 110.07 pounds sterling and RevPAR was 41.26 pounds sterling.

The crowd was mostly supporting England, but there were German fans in attendance, too.

“London just absorbs a lot of this demand due to the infrastructure and the amount of hotels that [it] has to offer. … We have seen similar trends with other sport events in London where there was no general demand pickup,” said Robert Bauer, manager, business intelligence, at STR.

Rachel Stevenson, director of operations at the 361-room Hilton London Wembley, which is adjacent to the stadium, said her property had seen some additional business on the night of the England-Germany game but that “it was not fantastic.”

She added she had no real idea why bookings were lower than expected beyond the continuation of government restrictions, but it's possible fans booked hotel stays in lower segments.

Various roadblocks remain for international travelers hoping to follow their favored teams. Fans traveling to games that are roughly 90-minute matches might have to potentially quarantine, both on arrival and return, for up to 24 days. The testing before and after travel, and the expense of that, also acted as a deterrent.

Due to the pandemic, the Euros is the first major soccer tournament in which games are spread across multiple countries, rather than having all games restricted to one or two nations.

The United Kingdom government is using the Euros, among other events, to test COVID-19 security and safety at mass-participation spectacles, but hotel occupancy has not in all cases moved in line with these experiments.

The Puskás Aréna in Budapest — which hosted some of the group-stage matches — saw capacity crowds for its two games in which Hungary played. Some international matches — notably Portugal versus France on June 23 with a reported attendance of almost 55,000 — were also heavy draws as a result of a good vaccination rollout and a softening of COVID-19 restrictions on the days of the matches themselves.

Budapest saw very positive performance increases when matches there took place both on weekdays and weekends.

Budapest hotel occupancy on the day of the Portugal-France game was 45.9%, and RevPAR was 23,987.41 Hungarian forints ($80.88), both vast year-over-year improvements from last summer during the pandemic. For the June 27 quarterfinal, in which The Netherlands lost to the Czech Republic, hotel occupancy was 39.2% and RevPAR was 19,217.21 Hungarian forints. Its other two games, both featuring the now-eliminated Hungary team, played on a Tuesday and Saturday, also saw notable increases in all three metrics.

A game such as the English-Ukraine matchup at Rome's Stadio Olimpico, would've been a massive demand driver in more typical circumstances. Roberto Necci, president of Italian hotel association Centro Studi Federalberghi Roma and CEO of revenue-management consultancy Necci Hotels, said hotels in Rome have seen many cancellations for the days before and after the tournament’s quarterfinal match on July 3, as well as for the months of September and October.

“In the past for this kind of event, football and rugby, we received a lot of bookings from the U.K. … The reason is COVID-19. It is not easy to come here, and also (not easy to) return home,” Necci said.

Using business-on-the-books data to try and show whether individual Euros games had an effect on performance does not shine much light on the issue due to booking windows becoming shorter during the pandemic, according to STR.

London’s forward-bookings data shows somewhat consistent weekend peaks and weekday troughs across the next few months. That bookings are being made closer to the stays themselves might mean that such consistency bodes well, as even more bookings come in closer to any particular week.

London does see some slight pickup on the weekdays of June 28-30.

Rome does see a spike in demand — but now likely cancellations — for July 2, the night before the England game, but the real demand generator for that month in the Italian capital is the European Junior Swimming Championships on July 6-12.