Hotels.com is extending its global partnership with Arsenal for another three seasons, keeping the Expedia Group-owned accommodation brand close to one of football’s most internationally followed clubs — and, more importantly, close to fans who increasingly build trips around matches.

The relationship began in 2023. Under the renewed agreement, Hotels.com remains an Official Partner of Arsenal, with visibility across the club’s men’s and women’s teams, prominent matchday exposure at Emirates Stadium, access to players, and rights to produce international content and campaigns.

This is more than football sponsorship dressed in travel branding. Hotels.com is trying to catch supporters at a very specific moment: when “I want to see Arsenal play” becomes “I need a flight, a hotel and a few days in London.”

From fandom to bookings

Football has always moved people. What has changed is how systematically travel platforms are trying to convert that movement into bookable demand.

Hotels.com says searches on its UK site for stays in Budapest rose 1,300% for the weekend of the 2026 UEFA Champions League final compared with equivalent dates a year earlier. Arsenal played in that final. During the final two months of the Premier League season, Hotels.com also recorded a 30% increase in searches for north London on Arsenal matchdays.

READ MORE: Vodafone Launches UEFA Champions League Travel eSIM for Football Fans

Those figures are internal search data rather than completed-booking numbers, so they should be read as a strong signal of intent, not as proof of equivalent revenue growth. Still, the direction is difficult to ignore.

“There’s no question football has a unique power to unite supporters in a shared passion they’ll cross borders for. As more travellers plan trips around meaningful experiences, we’re investing in partnerships that allow Hotels.com to show up in those moments of inspiration and intent,”

said Natalie Wills, Senior Vice President of Integrated Marketing and Creative at Hotels.com.

“We’ve seen this partnership work. Arsenal gives us cultural resonance, access to the kind of globally engaged traveller we want to reach, and football is an important way for Hotels.com to connect passion with travel. We’re excited to extend our relationship and continue the partnership we’ve created together,”

Wills added.

The trip is bigger than the match

The interesting part is what happens around the 90 minutes.

Hotels.com already uses its Arsenal presence to encourage supporters to turn fixtures into wider London stays, including accommodation around Emirates Stadium and Meadow Park. The renewed agreement also covers supporter experiences, campaigns and travel packages for fans following Arsenal in the UK and Europe.

That fits a wider sports-tourism pattern. Expedia Group research published in 2025 found that 44% of surveyed sports travellers had travelled internationally for their most recent sporting event, rising to 56% among 16–34-year-olds. Only 69% said the event itself was their main trip priority; 45% also prioritised experiencing the destination. Dining, shopping and sightseeing were among the most common activities around the event.

READ MORE: How Sport is Driving Fans’ Travel Preferences

For hotels and destinations, that matters. A travelling supporter is not automatically a one-night guest arriving just before kick-off and leaving at dawn. A well-designed football trip can spread spending across accommodation, restaurants, attractions, local transport and neighbouring destinations.

Expedia Group is clearly building infrastructure around that opportunity. Its Expedia Group Live programme connects hotels with major events and brand partnerships through dedicated Travel Hubs, including football-related campaigns. The company says its Liverpool FC Travel Hub saw a 172% week-on-week traffic increase following its “Finding Liverpool” campaign.

Where Hotels.com still has work to do

The Arsenal partnership is strategically neat, but sponsorship visibility alone is not enough. The strongest version of this model is not a logo at the stadium; it is a genuinely useful supporter journey.

That means packaging accommodation with practical match-trip information, flexible cancellation, transport guidance and offers that make sense around fixture uncertainty. Football schedules move because of broadcasting and competitions, while European away trips can be confirmed relatively late. Fans need flexibility more than another branded content page.

And Arsenal is obviously not the answer for every traveller. Someone choosing a city break on price, food, culture or family attractions has little reason to care which club Hotels.com sponsors. The partnership works precisely because it targets a high-intent community rather than pretending football is universally relevant.

Conclusion

Hotels.com is competing in a market where sports rights are becoming travel distribution channels. Booking.com has already used its UEFA partnerships to combine sponsorship with accommodation offers, including a 50% accommodation promotion around UEFA Women’s EURO 2025. Expedia Group, meanwhile, is developing Travel Hubs and event-led hotel marketing that go beyond conventional brand exposure.

The next competitive step is obvious: reduce the distance between fandom and transaction.

Hotels.com has the audience, Arsenal has the emotional pull, and Expedia Group has the booking infrastructure. What will separate this partnership from a conventional sponsorship is whether those pieces become one useful travel product — especially when fixtures change, hotel prices spike and thousands of supporters are trying to reach the same city at the same time.

In sports tourism, attention is easy to measure. The more valuable question is how efficiently a platform can turn that attention into a trip without making the fan assemble everything alone.