CLEVELAND — Most cities can only hope to have one massive weekend every year or two when all the hotel rooms in its downtown area are booked and the spillover is felt in the surrounding suburbs. Cleveland is looking at its third such weekend since April.
That's when the city hosted the Women's NCAA Final Four, followed by the total solar eclipse the next day. Then, in August, Cleveland was the site of the WWE's Summer Slam on the same night the Guardians were home, and Martin Lawrence was at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse.
This weekend's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony is on Saturday evening at the FieldHouse, and the Browns hosting the Bengals on Sunday already, but the Guardians advancing to the ALCS and hosting the Yankees and their massive fan base on Thursday, Friday and Saturday in Cleveland have taken it to a new level.
"We've been talking that this feels a lot like 2016 actually in Cleveland," said Destination Cleveland's Emily Lauer. "Because we had the Cavs Championship, we had the RNC, we had the Indians at the time in the World Series. So it's been probably eight years since we've had this in Cleveland and we'll take it. We'll take it every year if we can get it."
So will local bars, restaurants, and attractions like the Rock Hall and the "A Christmas Story House and Museum.
"It's going to be bonkers," said Chuck Siford, a tour guide at the Tremont landmark. "It'll be busy, there'll be a lot of tours. We'll probably do them every half-hour as we usually do when we have crowds that size but we'll still make it all work."
Downtown hotels were already pretty booked up because of the inductions and the Browns. Most of the remaining rooms were snatched up once the ALCS schedule was announced. This means Yankees fans will stay in suburbs like Beachwood, Westlake, and Independence.
"Which is amazing for the suburbs because what that also does is it drives up the rate that people have to pay for their hotel rooms," said Lauer. "We saw the same thing happen with the solar eclipse back in April. We saw the same thing in August when Summer slam was here."
Fortunately, the weather will improve as the week rolls on into the weekend, with sunshine and highs in the upper 60s.
Much like 2016, long playoff runs bring money for the host cities.
"Oh it's a gift, the playoffs, postseason for any of our teams is such a gift," said Destination Cleveland President and CEO David Gilbert. "Each one, when you get into postseason draws many more people from out of market."
Lauer said it's something the Guardians studied about ten years ago.
"At that point it was about $2 million in direct sales that were attributed to one playoff baseball game. So if you think about $2 million in 2012, 2013 and what that is in today's dollars," she said, every home game the Guardians can add in this run is significant for all.
