Dallas Area Hotel Rooms Still Available For Super Bowl Weekend

Added on Jan 24, 2011 by Jack Thurman in

Super Bowl

While most of us are content to stay at home and enjoy Super Bowl weekend in front of the TV while wagering at our favorite online sportsbook, if you’re bound and determined to make it to Dallas for the big game we’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news? There’s still an abundant supply of hotel rooms in the Dallas area for the Super Bowl weekend. The bad news? It’s going to cost you.

The Dallas area has over 100,000 hotel rooms and obviously the ones that have been locked up by now were reserved by the NFL and corporate bigwigs. The rest are up for grabs and, obviously, fans of the teams involved couldn’t make definite plans to attend until yesterday. So if you’re looking to go, you should ‘get while the gettin’ is good’ and be prepared for a little sticker shock. In the past five years, hotel room rates during Super Bowl week have usually seen a 100% increase from the same week a year before. According to Bobby Bowers, senior vice president of Smith Travel Research, you’ll see a similar scenario this year:

“With the Super Bowl … wherever you are you’re going to get [on average] a 100 percent bump, maybe more. I would say you’re going to be in that same range. The crunch time is usually Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday night. That’s when you’re going to see the biggest jump. After that you can almost drop it off a cliff. It’s going to come down really, really fast.”

So if you’re planning to go you’d be better off booking early to guarantee availability and get the best room rate. Jay Smith, president of a sports focused travel agency, underscored the obvious:

“The hotels, they’re going to make it while they can. You might get a Holiday Inn trying to get $399 or $499 because they can.”

You’ll pay the highest prices for hotels close to the stadium, but you’ll catch a break for accommodations out in the sticks. The average price at this point looks to be around $255 a night. If you don’t mind staying in a real flea bag establishment–the kind of place with ‘hourly rates’ and porno movies on the TV–you might secure a room for under $100 a night.

Don’t bother looking at the really swanky hotels in downtown Dallas–those are the ones that have already been booked up by the aforementioned corporate types. Another alternative for what could end up being a superior experience is to look west–roughly 1,200 miles west to Las Vegas, Nevada. Super Bowl weekend is always busy there, but you’ll be able to find a room for a fraction of what you’d pay in Dallas. The weather is great, you can enjoy Super Bowl betting in one of the city’s many sportsbooks and you can use the money you save for shopping, dining or gambling.