DETROIT (WXYZ) — With half a million people expected to come from all over the country, where does everyone stay? The NFL hasn’t put such a spotlight on our city in 17 years.
The city has grown significantly since Detroit hosted the Super Bowl but is the hotel industry ready yet for the influx?
The short answer...No.
WXYZ’s Brian Abel asked, “What is the hotel plan as of now? Do we have enough hotel rooms in the city?”
“Not even close. So, you know, again, we bring in half a million people. Probably 70% of those people will be from outside the region,” said Claude Molinari, CEO of Visit Detroit.
That 70 % is 300,000 people looking for hotel rooms for the NFL draft next year in Detroit and downtown hotels understand the opportunity.
“I think it's right up there with, you know, the auto shows and now the Grand Prix being downtown Detroit. Right. It's just another large event that can showcase everything that's going on in Detroit,” said James Dannecker, Detroit Foundation Hotel.
James Dannecker’s Foundation Hotel is one of many that’ve come online since the last major NFL event in the city, The Super Bowl in 2006.
His and other boutique hotels and all hotels will be all hands on deck and reservations are already coming in for next year’s draft.
Dannecker like so many others in the industry, are looking right now to Kansas City.
"Lucky enough, one of our hotels, the Crossroads, is getting to experience this right now in Kansas City, so we can kind of learn from them a little bit and take a page out of their book a little bit and apply that to what we're doing here in Detroit,” said James Dannecker from Foundation’s Hotel.
With a clear understanding that there isn’t enough hotel rooms in downtown Detroit, the city is working out logistics now to get people to the draft.
“I don't know if there's a city on Earth that could take an influx of half a million people for a three-day event that could sustain it with just what they have in their downtown core,” said Molinari. “The good news is we have 45,000 hotel rooms in southeast Michigan alone between Oakland, Wayne, and Macomb County.”
“There will absolutely have to be a traffic plan with shuttling from the suburbs because," said Molinari, “it's going to be a massive influx and that's going to create, you know, traffic issues.”
Traffic won’t be the only hurdle for those wanting to come.
“Arguably the biggest event before this might be the Taylor Swift concert coming up. And we saw the price gouging that happened for those tickets. How does the city prevent that kind of gouging happening for hotel space?” asked Abel.
“Well, the market will demand, make demands on the hotel space. And unfortunately, that is going to be, you know, a potential challenge,” said Molinari.
“Definitely going to be elevated rates and, you know. And that's the stuff, you know, just naturally kind of what comes with events like this organically in any market,” said Dannecker.
“Does that price people out?” asked Abel.
“I don't necessarily think so potentially, depending on who you are, what you're looking for, the length of stay potentially, and kind of where you want to be. But you know, again, I think that's what's great about the area in the city is everyone has kind of something unique to offer,” said Dannecker.
So, an immense amount of excitement and some difficulties for the city to overcome in the year ahead.
