USA: NCAA Tournament Hotel Market Report
Find out how the 2021 NCAA Men’s and Women’s basketball tournament impacted demand in the host cities of Indianapolis and San Antonio.
In March 2020, just weeks before the NCAA Men’s and Women’s basketball tournament was set to begin, COVID-19 swept the nation, and the tournament was cancelled.
A year later, the tournament was given the green light and set to take place in Indianapolis (Men’s) and San Antonio (Women’s).
Spotlight: Indianapolis
On January 4, 2021 the NCAA announced they would proceed with the much anticipated March Madness basketball tournament, with all 67 games taking place in Indiana — the majority played in Indianapolis1.
After the tournament announcement, there was an uptick of over 130% in flight searches through mid January. This was followed by a further increase in late February, leading up to the tournament.
Searches spiked immediately after January 4th, with lead times of 0-7 & 8-28 dropping off. Conversely, we saw a spike in the 8-28 day range, along with the 90+ lead time range (correlating to the March Madness schedule).
On February 19th, 2021 the NCAA announced they would allow fans at a 25% capacity for the men’s tourney and 17% for the women’s tourney2.
After the announcement from the NCAA that they would allow capacity to increase to 25%, we see a second wave of tournament flight searches.
Hotel searches also surged, correlating to the initial March Madness announcement, along with the announcement of 25% fan capacity one month later.
Spotlight: San Antonio
Similar upticks in Flight and Hotel searches can be seen in the San Antonio market, where the Women’s March Madness tournament took place2.
Mid-February flight searches for San Antonio significantly picked up, increasing 159% from January 1st until March 28th.
Similar to the San Antonio flight searches, hotel searches also saw a 350% increase from the beginning of January through mid-March.
