With travel getting more and more expensive, esp for those of us that use the USD, hotels are one major expense. I noticed on my last trip to Brazil the average room was 400 USD for Rio and Sao Paulo. I have to admit that Firecat was right, Rio is now too expensive to enjoy. (don't tell him I said that)

 

Here is an interesting article from the Telegraph:

 

The average cost of a night in the Brazilian city during the first three months of 2012 was £192.88, nearly 50 per cent more expensive than during the same period last year.

 

The cheapest destinations to feature in the study were Bangkok, Prague and Beijing, where a hotel typically cost just under £50 a night. Budapest, at £52, provided similarly good value, while rooms in Vienna were £74 on average.

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/9260072/Rio-hotels-are-the-worlds-most-expensive.html

Well, if the Brazilian economy is functioning properly, more hotels will be built and prices should come down. There's no reason why hotels should stay so expensive in a country with GDP per capita of approx $12800 per capita. That's less than 1/3 the GDP per capita of (say) Germany, yet in Berlin some accommodation can be had for less than $100 a night.

 

From a tourist perspective, ideally there would be some speculative hotel building prior to the world cup.