- College towns often struggle to accommodate tourists during events such as graduation ceremonies, leading to a shortage of hotel rooms and soaring prices.
- Parents of college students often endure high prices not only during graduation season, but also for events such as family weekends and homecoming.
- Tips to avoid graduation day nightmares include booking early, considering alternatives like Airbnb, and checking the secondary market for hotel availability.
If you think it’s hard to get tickets to a Taylor Swift concert or the World Series, try booking a hotel room in an American college town for your graduation day.
Toni Milborn faced this problem before her daughter graduated from West Virginia University in May. Morgantown hotel room rates have doubled ahead of a local event. In nearby towns, room rates have more than tripled to $350 a night.
“It just feels like price gouging,” said Milbourn, the editor-in-chief of a West Virginia newspaper. “People need to realize that companies are taking advantage of people at a time when they should be celebrating.”
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A graduating cadet throws his hat into the air at the end of the Class of 2023 Commencement Ceremony at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York, May 27, 2023. (Reuters/Eduardo Munoz/File photo)
Whether it’s a family weekend or a homecoming, small communities often receive far more visitors than they can handle. Meanwhile, airline and hotel pricing algorithms do what they were designed to do: raise prices when demand spikes.
“Many small college towns have populations of 20,000 or 30,000 people and many hotel rooms,” said Chris Anderson, a professor at Cornell University’s Nolan School of Hotel Administration who studies pricing. There may be 2,000 rooms.”
“For high-demand dates like college graduations, you suddenly have 40,000 parents and guests participating in multi-day celebrations. There is now a real imbalance between supply and demand. ”
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As a result, parents have to pay very high prices for hotels and flights, even if they are available.
To avoid this challenge, Shama Dignan, a digital marketer from South Orange, New Jersey, took action for Parents Weekend at a Midwestern college even before her second son accepted the school’s offer.
“It never occurred to me that these hotel rates could be higher than in larger cities,” Dignan said. She was surprised to find that one local hotel charged her more than $1,000 per night instead of the usual room rate of about $100.
How can parents avoid graduation nightmares? Here are some tips.
Let’s prepare early
Many hotels typically accept reservations a year in advance. If your child is graduating next year, start booking now. You should have already made your reservations for our fall parent weekends. If these dates have not yet been set, please check the College Parent’s Her Facebook group for updates.
Anderson said hotels may be more accommodating than usual during these high-demand dates, including requiring advance payment for non-refundable reservations and imposing minimum night stays. It is said that there is.
Check out the alternatives
Hotels have a fixed number of rooms, but Airbnb and VRBO homeowners may offer additional rooms, apartments, or homes on days of high demand.
For Parents’ Weekend, Dignan booked a $300-a-night Airbnb 10 minutes from campus instead of a $500-plus local hotel.
A note from Anderson: Some areas of the country, such as New York City, have strict short-term rental agreements that limit homeowners’ ability to absorb large numbers of visitors.
Search for secondary market
Parents who want to cancel non-refundable hotel rooms are in a bind. This is why online hotel marketplaces have emerged.
“They specialize in setting up hotel rooms for high-demand dates and allowing people to prepay for rooms they no longer need,” Anderson said. “It’s like StubHub’s secondary market, but for hotel rooms.”
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Mr Milbourne has given up on local hotels and plans to sleep at a family home instead.
“I don’t think hotels should be raising prices at a time like this,” she says. “Not only did her daughter graduate, she spent four years on active duty in the Army, which is huge for us.”
