Before you know it, loved ones will be beaming with pride while their academic star walks on graduation day feeling nervous, excited and relieved to the tune of Edward Elgar’s “March No. 1 in D,” better known as the processional “Pomp and Circumstance.”
College graduations are a cap and gown-wearing cash cow for hotels in close proximity of commencement venues, and heaven help the Type-B traveler coming in for the ceremony and usual obligatory family events. Procrastinators run the risk of seeing “no vacancy” signs on even low-rated properties, and if by some miracle there’s room at the inn at the 11th hour, chances are good that the rate is bad. You might also run into a minimum-nights policy.
“Most hotels utilize a revenue management system that suggests rates based on supply and demand,” explained Robert Rauch, CEO of R.A. Rauch & Associates, a San Diego-based hotel management and consulting firm. “So, when, say, 3,000 room requests come in for 1,000 total units in a market, two things happen. One, rates at hotels of closest proximity to the event raise their prices because their booking pace is unusually fast. Two, rates at properties nearby catch on and raise their rates.
It’s even more of a seller’s market in so-called college towns, which, by loose definition, are small cities with a charming downtown walkable from campus. Think San Luis Obispo, Chico, Davis and, in a bit of a stretch, UCLA’s Westwood neighborhood. At graduation time, it’s not atypical for even three-star properties to charge for a weekend what a grad’s grandparent might have paid for a year’s tuition back in the day.