A Thanksgiving-level surge of travelers will come through Kansas City International Airport on Friday.
Fans from the Netherlands and Tunisia are heading home after Thursday night’s game, and Austria and Algeria supporters are arriving for the next match on Saturday.
In anticipation of increased travel during World Cup matches, VMD, the airport’s security screening contractor, deployed additional security personnel to help streamline the process and keep the lines moving.
The Kansas City Aviation Department’s public information officer, Jackson Overstreet, says they’re expecting a high volume of passengers.
“The hope for today is 40 to 45,000 people in total flying in and out of Kansas International,” Overstreet says. “We're treating it like one of the biggest days of the year."
Overstreet says the airport has opened up all 16 security checkpoints, something they do maybe twice a year on super high volume holidays.
“That's on par with the days you think of like the Sunday after Thanksgiving where everyone's coming in or coming back out,” Overstreet says. “Big day for us."
Hotel bookings, too, are on the rise, after low reservations before the World Cup worried business owners in the area. Figures from VisitKC show that room reservations surrounding the Argentina-Algeria match were up about 111% over this time last year and bookings for the dates around the July 3 Round of 32 match are up 99% over last year.
The increase in bookings is not panning out exactly as anticipated. Instead of fans staying for days or weeks, most come into town and make last-minute reservations for the night of the match they plan to see.
VisitKC spokesperson Mackenzie Wolters said that hotel bookings peak around match dates and then return to lower activity after matches end. She said the tourism agency expects hotels to stay busy for the next week, as fans come in for the Algeria-Austria match Saturday and the Round of 32 match on July 3.
“A lot of international visitors are coming into Kansas City sometimes and not even having a hotel to stay in,” Wolters said. “They're following their team around, so they're finding the very next destination that they're going to and they're landing at the airport or driving in their rental car and they're booking a hotel as soon as they get here. We're seeing a lot more of that last minute surge of bookings as people get here to Kansas City.”
Official data on hotel bookings won’t be available until after the tournament is over.
Overstreet, with the Kansas City airport, says it has added translators inside the terminal for both Spanish and for Arabic to help keep lines moving during this travel surge.
“They will be able to point them around, get them to the right place. Because we know, especially with Algeria coming in and Tunisia leaving, we're going to have some people who, Arabic will be their first language,” Overstreet says. “And then, we know just in general, Spanish has been one of the big ones we've had with a lot of fans coming in, a lot of fans staying here.”
The Kansas City International Airport had its second-busiest outbound traffic day in its history on June 17, according to a Kansas City Aviation Department press release last month. On that date, domestic flights filled with World Cup fans flooded the airport after the Kansas City match, and Aerolineas Argentinas flew a charter out of MCI with match attendees. Close to 23,500 people were screened through the security area, according to the release.
Overstreet says the new airport terminal has helped bring the World Cup to Kansas City and international events like this show it off.
“It's a day like today where you've got the single terminal, you've got all the staff being able to handle everything, and it really shows the ability of having this new building and the people inside of it to accomplish everything we needed to get done,” Overstreet says.
