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Just like in 2019, the inaugural year of the Something in the Water music festival, hotels around the Virginia Beach Oceanfront are filling up, driving the nightly prices of accommodations close to the venue almost to four-digit territory.
For example, a Friday-Sunday night stay at the Oceanfront DoubleTree — on the Boardwalk between the festival stages at Third and 10th streets — will cost $732 a night for two people, per the hotel’s website Tuesday afternoon.
Airbnb and Vrbo listings at the Oceanfront also are getting pricey, with three-night Airbnb prices near the stages going for as much as $1,800 a night and Vrbo condominiums near the festival running as high as $1,045 for two people. According to the Vrbo website, 81% of its Oceanfront properties are booked for the weekend as of Tuesday afternoon.
It remains to be seen, however, whether the festival sells out as many rooms as in 2019, when hotels in Virginia Beach were 94.9% full during the last Saturday in April, according to data from hotel research organization STR.
John Zirkle, president of the Virginia Beach Hotel Association, was upbeat about the weekend, estimating around 75-85% of rooms to be filled for the entire city.
“Hotels are filling up very well,” Zirkle said. “Many are full already and others are very close to being sold out.”
He also noted that rooms would continue to fill up at the last minute.
There are other clues as to how quickly rooms are selling. For the first festival, third-party site Booking.com said 99% of Virginia Beach rooms were occupied for the festival dates, according to a Virginian-Pilot story in March 2019. This year, the same website said only 77% of rooms were booked for the weekend by Tuesday afternoon.
And in 2019, the festival itself sold out on March 27, nearly a month before happening. With just days before this year’s edition, organizers have not announced a repeat sellout.
Still, area tourism experts expect hotels around the region to benefit from the festival.
“I would say that it’s really good,” Elizabeth Parker, president of the Newport News Hospitality Association, said, adding that she expected some spillover traffic from festivalgoers looking for rooms outside South Hampton Roads.
Inside Business
In Norfolk, the hotel business has been booming recently even without a Something in the Water-sized event, said Kurt Krause, president and CEO of the VisitNorfolk conventions and visitors bureau. He said hotel occupancy in downtown Norfolk reached almost 80% in March, up from 69% in 2019.
About a month ago, hotel operators told Krause they were concerned hotel traffic from the festival wouldn’t spill over into Norfolk. Still, he noted that downtown Norfolk hotels were priced much higher than four years ago: $278 a night for three nights at Hilton Norfolk The Main and $239 a night for the Norfolk Waterside Marriott, according to their websites.
“The demand and the interest in Norfolk is still pretty high,” Krause said.
According to Airbnb, Virginia Beach rentals this weekend are being used the most by travelers from Richmond, followed by Hampton, Norfolk, Chesapeake, Newport News, Washington, Suffolk, Alexandria and Charlotte, North Carolina.
Additionally, Airbnb hosts in D.C. made almost $1.5 million in revenue during the June 17-19 Something in the Water festival last year, according to the rental platform.
Still need to book a room for the festival? Zirkle told festivalgoers to hunt online, because there are still reasonable rates available. Outside Virginia Beach, rates are even better, Krause and Parker said. She also said festival attendees should be aware of how far their hotel is from the festival site and to plan accordingly for parking and traffic.
Trevor Metcalfe, 757-222-5345, trevor.metcalfe@pilotonline.com