A 'nuanced’ outlook for Kansas City World Cup tourism? More like brutal | Opinion
The thing nobody wants to say out loud is getting harder to ignore: Kansas City’s World Cup is shaping up to be a bust.
Not a total bust. The matches at Arrowhead will be electric, if you can stomach the ticket prices. International visitors will wander our streets and take photos of barbecue plates. We’ll have a story to tell our grandkids.
But those gaudy numbers FIFA and Visit KC have been dangling in front of hotel owners and downtown restaurants? The ones that had Airbnb operators rubbing their hands together like cartoon villains?
They belong in the bin, as the Brits say.
Out today is a report from the American Hotel & Lodging Association that surveyed hotel owners and operators across every World Cup host market to get a read on bookings, pricing and demand. The question was simple: How are hotels actually performing versus expectations?
The answer is ugly. Especially here.
The AHLA identifies Kansas City as “the most negatively impacted host market in the survey.” Our market is “oversupplied, underperforming, and highly rate-sensitive relative to normal summer benchmarks.”
Ouch.
The survey’s findings
The headline stat is that somewhere between 85% and 90% of Kansas City hotels are currently booking below expectations. We’re about six weeks out from the tournament.
Many hotels are running behind what they’d see in a typical June or July with nothing going on. That tracks with what Kansas City International Airport data has been showing for weeks: Airline seat capacity for the summer is roughly in line with where it was two years ago, when there was no major event driving travel.
One contributing factor here is that FIFA initially reserved massive blocks of hotel rooms across host cities, creating a mirage of strong demand. Hotels priced accordingly. Recently, though, FIFA began releasing most of those rooms back onto the market due to lack of demand. In Kansas City, 70% to 95% of FIFA’s inventory is now back in circulation. Perhaps that is why, of this writing, you can book a $400 room at the Loews the night of the Algeria-Austria match. It’s one of the nicest hotels in the city.
The FIFA factor explains the rooms. But it doesn’t explain the lack of demand.
Hotel operators here point to two culprits: visa barriers and weak international demand. Ask yourself: Would you post a $15,000 bond to attend a World Cup match in Europe or Asia? That is what President Donald Trump is imposing on travelers from certain countries — including Tunisia and Algeria, two nations actually playing matches in Kansas City. It’s not hard to understand how a policy like that would reduce turnout.
That’s especially bad because international visitors are very important to the whole World Cup proposition. They stay longer, spend more, and drop about 1.7 times what a domestic traveler spends per trip. Visit KC said as much when they were defending its 650,000-visitor projection to me a few weeks ago. Domestic fans will still show up, but they cluster around match days and leave.
Common sense tells us many who live within a few-hour drive won’t even bother to book a hotel room. Now, it seems, so do the early numbers.
‘Holding out hope’
Kansas City is the worst case, but it’s not alone. Most host cities are running behind projections. Miami and Atlanta’s hotels are outperforming, but everyone else is tracking closer to a regular summer than a global spectacle.
The AHLA report tries to cushion the blow with some soft language.
“Hotels across host markets have spent years preparing for the World Cup, and while there is real excitement, the data points to a more nuanced outlook,” said Rosanna Maietta, AHLA’s president and CEO.
Translation: Nuanced = way worse than expected.
“A range of factors have tempered early optimism, though forward indicators show there is still meaningful opportunity ahead,” Maietta said.
Translation: They’re praying for a late surge to save this thing.
“The U.S. and FIFA must avoid unnecessary cost increases on visas and transportation,” Maietta said, “and our message to consumers is clear: now is the time to book your hotel.”
Translation: Please, for the love of God, book a room, because Trump’s policies are killing us with international visitors.
Kansas City talking points
Around KC, various stakeholders are reaching for rose-colored glasses to see if maybe they can block the glare of these harsh numbers.
Jeff Keeley, manager of the InterContinental on the Country Club Plaza, told The Star Monday he expects hotel reservations to ramp up as the tournament draws closer.
“We’re still holding out hope that it will continue to grow and it’ll be a boon for us,” he said.
Andrea O’Hara, executive director for the Hotel and Lodging Association of Greater Kansas City, said that guest reservations are beginning to pick up. But, she acknowledged, “It’s true, our hotels are not full. We have lots of inventory available throughout the metro.”
Even Visit KC — the region’s chief booster, with its name on the bid — isn’t sounding all that convincing anymore.
The group has trotted out a new voice, its director of market research, Derik Detter, to explain the gap between the projections and the gnarly numbers that keep rolling in. In a statement, he laid the blame on a “change in travel booking behavior” caused by the “ever-changing global landscapes” — presumably the Trump visa issue and the economic instability brought about by Trump’s war in Iran. (Notable: Two weeks ago, Visit KC said global tumult had not changed its expectations for visitor numbers.)
Detter is also touting a recent nod from Travel + Leisure naming Kansas City this year’s top trending Google Flights summer destination. But that designation tracks flight searches, not people actually getting on planes. It’s thin gruel.
It would be great to believe otherwise — that just around the corner is a World Cup summer that transforms Kansas City, fills every hotel room and spills into the streets for weeks.
What’s taking shape instead looks smaller. A handful of busy nights where we get a taste of some real global energy. But nothing like a tidal wave.
And with every passing week, that gap between expectation and reality gets a little harder to explain away.
This story was originally published May 5, 2026 at 10:55 AM.
