By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
The FIFA World Cup isn't coming to Kansas City until 2026, but already tourism officials are beginning to prepare for a large amount of people.
Over the last month the St. Joseph Convention and Visitors Bureau has seen several presentations from Visit KC, the Missouri Division of Tourism, and the FIFA committee for Kansas City
Director of Communications and Marketing Christian Mengel says these presentations have been designed to loop in tourism officials surrounding Kansas City
"To give these presentations and talk about hey here's what to expect," Mengel tells KFEQ Hotline host Barry Birr. "And given the amount of work it took to just become a host city, they would not be wasting their time right now talking to the area places if they did not know that it was going to affect us."
Executive Director Marci Bennett says a focus right now is designing tourism packages for people coming from all over the world to the area
"For example, we're working on a Jesse James package, which includes Clay County" Bennett explains. "And so,, we do the farm home, we do the burial site, we do the murder site, the banks, all that kind of thing, and there are people that would want that significantly."
Bennett says starting in 2025 they will begin to present those packages to people from the UK and abroad so the packages can be promoted over there.
Bennett adds a challenge right now is not knowing where fans of the World Cup are going to be coming from
"We can't mess it up, but we want to make sure that we enhance it to the greatest ability that we can," Bennett says. "And we're just trying to find those little holes to plug into that we do make it the best experience for not only the visitor, but for the economic development of our community."
Bennett says they won't know until 2026 what teams will be going to what home base locations.
Qualifying matches for the World Cup began in September, and will wrap up at the end of March 2026
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