Remaining Hotel Rooms During Super Bowl Going at High Prices

Woe be to Super Bowl visitors looking for hotel or motel accommodations in San Diego. If they can find one--and an estimated 90% are already booked--they’ll likely have to pay 50% to 100% above the normal rate.

At the Padre Trails Inn near Old Town, a room that normally goes for $42.50 a night will rent for $100 a night--and must be taken for a minimum of four nights over Super Bowl weekend.

In Mission Valley’s Hotel Circle, the Hotel Circle Budget Motel will charge $48.15 for a room that normally goes for $34.88; Circle 8 will rent a $49.50 room for $75, with a four-night minimum, and the Circle 7-11 will rent a $46 room for $65, four-night minimum.

Even farther from the center of Super Bowl activity, prices will increase. The Clairemont Mesa Travelodge will charge $77 and upward for a room that normally costs between $47 and $51; Hacienda Travelodge in El Cajon is charging $65 for a room that normally goes for $39.

And the Dolphin Motel in Point Loma is asking from $65 to $85 for rooms that ordinarily get between $30 and $45.

Price gouging? No sirree, reservation clerks say when asked by a caller.

“Everybody’s doing it” said one desk clerk.

“It’s simply a matter of supply and demand,” another said firmly.

The prospect of 70,000 people coming to town has clearly jiggled that supply and demand ratio in a county with an estimated 34,000 hotel and motel rooms.

The price increases run counter to the wishful thinking of the National Football League. “We always urge hotels not to charge an amount that is above their normal rate for January,” said Sue Robichek, an NFL special events assistant.

Indeed, not all hotels in San Diego are increasing their prices. But, by and large, those rooms are already booked--in some cases, filled a year or more ago when they were reserved by the NFL itself, which is allocating blocks of rooms to NFL and team officials and corporate sponsors.

The San Diego Hotel-Motel Assn. pledged two years ago to the NFL to honor its 1985 pricing schedule for Super Bowl Week. But the association represents only about 14,000 rooms in the region, and of those, about 11,000 were immediately set aside for NFL use, effectively taking them out of the public market. Those rooms are earmarked for NFL officials, its subsidiary companies, football teams, corporate sponsors and out-of-town media and technical support crews.

“Everyone I know is holding the line,” said Ted Kissane, president of the Hotel-Motel Assn. and general manager of the Sheraton Harbor Island East, which is fully booked by the NFL.

Yet, of 12 hotels and motels contacted earlier by The Times which still had vacancies, only one--the E-Z 8 in Mission Valley--was honoring its normal room rate, $33.88. “We’re aware, and very proud of the fact, that we’re sticking to our normal price,” a reservations clerk said.

What about those hotels and motels raising their rates, Kissane was asked.

“They’re not members of our association,” Kissane said. “Any reasonable person is going to know that in any industry, there are the good guys and the bad guys. The people who have reputations to protect will hold the line; those that are less reputable will not, and I suppose the people who are making last-minute reservations . . . may be in more of a position of getting ripped off.”

He added: “All we can do is explain to the various hotel operators that if we want to be considered for future Super Bowls, we’d better be darn good hosts the first time around.”

4-Day Stays OK

Price increases aside, Kissane said he had no problem with hotels enforcing four-day minimums during the Super Bowl.

“There are enough people coming to San Diego and wanting to stay four days,” he said. “You’re not going to stay in business long if you book a room just for the night before the Super Bowl and sell out, blocking out the hundreds of people who want to spend four or five nights but can’t stay at your hotel because the peak night is already booked. So you’ve got to accommodate those who want to stay longer. That’s just smart business.”

A telephone hot line--236-1212--was established by the San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau to help out-of-towners find available hotel and motel rooms in the county, broken down by geographic area and price.

Pamela Davies, housing coordinator for the bureau, said that only about 3,200 rooms--less than 10% of the countywide total--were still available as of Friday, based on feedback from those hotels and motels participating in the hot-line network.

She said many of those remaining rooms will likely be taken two weeks before the Super Bowl, once the two competing teams are known and their fans make travel plans.

Officials say they believe there will be enough rooms in the county to accommodate everyone for the Super Bowl, and the NFL’s Robichek noted that some persons may decide to avoid the local tourist crush and make Orange County their home base for their Super Bowl vacation.