IOWA CAUCUSES

Hotel rooms fetch $900 for caucus night

Kim Norvell

knorvell@dmreg.com

John Edwards campaign staffers Dan Secatore, left, and Eric Soufer place a sign on the podium at the Renaissance Savery Hotel in 2008. Campaign staffers and media have filled up hotels in downtown Des Moines ahead of the 2016 caucus.

It will cost you an arm and a leg to stay in downtown Des Moines on caucus night — if you can find a room, that is.

Some standard rooms have gone for as much as $900 a night during the week leading up to Feb. 1, when Iowa hosts the first-in-the-nation caucus.

Now with the big night less than a month away, out-of-town guests looking to be in the heart of the action might be out of luck. A search Wednesday found only one downtown hotel with rooms available.

Eric Wahrman, general manager of the Hampton Inn & Suites, 120 S.W. Water St., said the hotel's caucus week "no vacancy" sign has been lit for at least two months. Rooms there were going for more than quadruple the price of a typical night's stay. (It cost $179 to stay there one night this week.)

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The adjacent Resident Inn, 100 S.W. Water St., had rooms going at similar rates.

"Honestly we started out at $469 a night, and they were going so quickly we kept bumping up the price," Wahrman said. "But the demand never stopped."

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This is the first caucus for the 131-room hotel along the Des Moines River. It opened in June 2014 and less than a year later started fielding calls for caucus night accommodations.

Wahrman said he will greet mostly media, such as C-SPAN, at his hotel during caucus week.

It seems most media types have chosen downtown Des Moines for their once-every-four-years invasion. Carl Deeken, general manager at Des Lux Hotel, 800 Locust St., said CBS News booked all of the hotel’s 51 rooms in June. The network's reporters will stay for five days.

"We didn’t charge them enough," Deeken said.

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The closest available hotel room he'd heard of being available was the DoubleTree by Hilton, 6800 Fleur Drive, near the Des Moines airport. But the chain’s online booking site said no dice to the Register’s attempts to find a room for Feb. 1.

The caucus night media center will be located inside Capital Square, 400 Locust St., and campaigns typically choose downtown hotels for their post-caucus parties.

It’s not surprising rooms went quickly, said Greg Edwards, president and CEO of the Greater Des Moines Convention and Visitors Bureau. The bureau projects an 88 percent occupancy rate metro-wide the weekend of the caucus. A typical February weekend would see 60 percent, he said.

There is some good news for a couple last-minute bookers: As of 4:30 p.m. Wednesday the Quality Inn & Suites Events Center, 929 Third St., had a whopping five rooms available at normal rates.

Brian Bocken, owner and general manager, said the hold-out is pretty typical for his hotel, but he has noticed campaign staffers staying less time than they did in 2008. Then, staffers were setting up camp as early as November, he said.

"I personally do not see this being the volume it was back in 2008," Bocken said. "I think everybody is waiting to see who the front-runner is and who can afford to spend money on rooms and bringing in extra staff."

Searches on Priceline, Travelocity and Expedia show there’s plenty of rooms available in West Des Moines, Urbandale, Altoona and other Des Moines suburbs at close-to standard rates.

David Whalen, manager of the Holiday Inn & Suites on Mills Civic Parkway in West Des Moines, said people haven’t started calling specifically for caucus weekend. Their guests, he said, typically book within just a couple days of travel.

Edwards said it’s clear those suburban hotels are already experiencing high demand — prices listed on online booking sites are higher than their typical rates.