College Towns and Hotel Occupancy

As the fall approaches, college towns all across America are flooded with undergraduate students eager to move into their dorm rooms. Along with them come parents helping them move in, and alumni headed to town for home football games. Reliving the good old days, or visiting your student, is made difficult in some of these smaller college towns where hotels book quickly at premium rates.

It’s no secret that football is a major part of college life for many students and alumni, with many stadiums in the U.S. holding over 50,000 fans. There are seven schools in power 5 conferences (ACC, SEC, Big 10, Big 12, Pac-12) where the seats in the stadium outnumber the residents within a 5-mile radius. Looking at all of the schools from power 5 conferences, the average stadium holds over 66,000 fans, with an average population of over 227,000 in a 5-mile radius, of which on average 9,790 live in the dorms on their campuses. Below is a chart detailing the seven schools, the seating capacity of the stadium, and the population within 5 and 10 miles of the school. The University of Mississippi, commonly referred to as Ole Miss, is the only school whose stadium has a higher seating capacity than the population within 10 miles.

These large stadiums lead to many out-of-town guests, but often only for 6 or 7 weekends in the fall. Area hotels do not have the capacity for the high demand on these weekends, and what hotel rooms are there are often very expensive and book quickly. While some people will stay with family or friends, and some rent homes on sites like Airbnb, many will have to stay a significant distance from the university. In areas like Blacksburg, Virginia, home to Virginia Tech, the largest city with reasonable hotel rates is likely Roanoke, a 45-minute drive away.

In South Bend, Indiana, home of Notre Dame, the stadium seats 77,622, and the population in the 5 mile radius is just 180,394, and 7,800 of them live in dormitories on the campus. Hotel capacities are not built for the seven home football games, and people stay as far away as Chicago.

The map below shows the hotel demand around Clemson, South Carolina for the fourth quarter of the year.

For local economies, these small towns thrive the weekends of home football games. The influx of people brings substantial revenues to restaurants and s