DETROIT – It may be too late to score a hotel room in downtown Detroit for the NFL Draft.
“To have an event like this with hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world descending upon your city, it’s going to fill up hotel rooms in all three counties and beyond,” Visit Detroit President and CEO Claude Molinari said.
Hotels are also filling up across the Detroit River.
“We got seven major hotels in downtown Windsor, four of which are completely sold out on Thursday night, and they’re tracking about 85% or higher occupancy on the Friday,” Tourism Windsor Essex CEO Gordon Orr said.
Some visitors are turning to short-term rentals.
According to Airbnb officials, Detroit saw a surge of searches of over 450% for the NFL Draft weekend.
But there are plenty of rooms still available, they said.
Airbnb said Grand Rapids, Chicago, and Traverse City are the top origin cities for guests heading to Detroit over that weekend.
Molinari said that if Detroit wants to attract more major events, it will need more hotel rooms than the 6,000 currently available downtown.
He said Detroit loses out on dozens of conventions yearly because of it.
“Most of the major large events, like, for instance, we’re going after the NBA All Star Game, we need to add at least another 1,500 hotel rooms in order to meet their minimum criteria, and then, if we’re talking about international meetings and conventions, and trade shows, they also have very strict guidelines,” Molinari said.
He said the downtown area needs at least five hotels with 300-400 guest rooms.
The NFL draft is scheduled for April 25-27 in Detroit.