San Diego Hotels Get Super Prices for the Super Bowl

Woe be it to the Super Bowl visitor looking for hotel or motel accommodations in San Diego. If he can find one--and an estimated 90% are already booked--he’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--and must be taken for a minimum of four nights over Super Bowl weekend.

In Mission Valley’s Hotel Circle near San Diego’s Jack Murphy Stadium, 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.

Have an Answer

Price gouging? No siree, 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 for the Jan. 31 game has clearly jiggled the 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.

Not all hotels in San Diego are increasing their prices but, by and large, those rooms are already booked--in some cases, reserved a year or more ago by the NFL itself, which is allocating blocks of rooms to league 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 news media and technical support crews.

Holding Line

“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 by The Times on Thursday and Friday that 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.

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

“That’s just smart business,” he said

A telephone hot line--(619) 236-1212--has been established by the San Diego Convention and Visitors Bureau to help out-of-towners find available hotel and motel rooms. Pamela Davies, housing coordinator for the bureau, said only about 3,200 rooms--less than 10% of the countywide total--were available as of Friday.

She said many of those remaining rooms will probably 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 people may decide to avoid the local tourist crush and make Orange County their home base for their Super Bowl vacation.