Fort Wayne set a record for January when its average hotel occupancy rate hit 49.9 percent, a tourism official said Friday.
John Felts, spokesman for Visit Fort Wayne, said that represents 17,000 more nights when local hotel rooms were occupied than in January 2014 – or a total of 79,464 nights sold.
The city has about 5,000 hotel rooms, Felts said. Officials calculate occupancy by multiplying total rooms by the number of days in a month. That equates to an estimated 155,000 possible opportunities for hotel room sales in January.
Summer months traditionally generate the city’s highest occupancy rates for the year as tourists visit the Fort Wayne Children’s Zoo, TinCaps baseball games and various festivals, Felts said.
In January, the city hosted several events that attracted large crowds, including the Fort Wayne Farm Show, the Indiana Music Educators Association’s annual conference, the two-day Fort Wayne MLK Volleyball Challenge and Mat Mayhem – a collection of 80 high school and middle school teams and 85 college teams competing in championship wrestling tournaments.