The world’s busiest airport and the city it built: 106.3 million passengers through Hartsfield-Jackson, a second-largest-in-America hotel pipeline of 18,239 rooms, and a 2026 World Cup semifinal at Mercedes-Benz Stadium that turned a connection economy into a destination. Eight studies, one hub.
Atlanta enters the series as the ultimate hub city — a metropolis whose entire visitor economy flows from the airport that made it. Hartsfield-Jackson kept the world’s busiest title in 2025 with 106.3 million passengers despite a Southwest schedule cut, while the hotel market built ahead of demand: 160 projects and 18,239 rooms in the pipeline, second only to Dallas, running into flat occupancy near 64%. The bet is the calendar: eight World Cup matches, a semifinal, and the 2028 Super Bowl.
The conversion machinery is the convention campus. The Georgia World Congress Center and its surroundings — Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Centennial Olympic Park, the new 976-room Signia — generated $1.94 billion in FY2025 impact, 86% of it from out-of-state visitors. MARTA rebuilt its central Five Points station while trains ran through it, launched its first BRT line in April 2026, and carried 65.8 million trips in 2025. The BeltLine completed 13.6 trail miles, stitching 45 neighborhoods into a walkable network the rail map never served.
The question these eight studies track is the conversion rate: whether the world’s busiest airport can produce a visitor economy to match its passenger volume — and whether Atlanta’s 18,000-room bet on the World Cup pays off in occupancy, rate, and a permanently re-rated downtown.
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