TrumpedUpVol
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Something is up with this. Collusion by the downtown hotels. The others at cedar bluff straw plains and turkey creek aren’t doing this
There are going to be seven hotels, yielding more than 700 additional rooms, opening in the next four years downtown and it'll simply serve to increase the median nightly rate. There's absolutely a ceiling at some point, guided in some sense by the maximum nightly rate posted on a room's door (though I'm sure that's malleable and exceptions exist), but the Hyatt Place was charging over $1100/night last year in the ~10 days leading up to the Ole Miss game so a Tennessee squad firing on all cylinders can and will command an even bigger premium for marquee conference games once Texas and Oklahoma join the fold.
There are around 2,700 to 3,000 hotel rooms in downtown Knoxville right now (call it 3,500 once the new hotels are built), and that density coupled with UT football and the region's beauty lend to the desirability. If you assume something like 1.8 fans per room and an occupancy rate of 82.5%, that's still just under 5,200 fans of the ~96,000 that can buy a seat in Neyland. The cost is outrageously high, especially relative to what it has been in the past (remember when people were scared to go downtown?), but it's not all that unthinkable for 3,000 or so groups to spend $2k+ on accommodations for a conference opponent weekend. Luckily, plenty of other hotels outside of downtown's confines provide a substantially better value at the minor inconvenience of being unable to walk to Market Square.
My advice to anyone intending to stay downtown or on campus without spending a huge premium is to book over a year in advance. A lot of hotels have thirteen month windows, but you should try to hop on it during that sweet spot between bookings opening and the conference schedule being announced (mid-late September) for the next year's season if you want the best chance of paying a reasonable rate. You won't know exactly who's coming to town when, sure, but if there's no cancellation fee just book a few weekends and see where the cards fall. Airbnb is also a good option, especially since a lot of the more traditional owners and newcomers might not be privy to the scheduling patterns and release date so you'll have some solid options albeit with a far more frustrating cancellation policy in many cases.