Anderson's hotels sold out for weekend of Indianapolis 500's 100th running

The appeal of the 100th running of the Indianapolis 500 on May 29 and the well-attended Little 500 at the Anderson Speedway on May 28 has drawn race fans to Madison County, said Matt Rust, executive director of the Anderson/Madison County Visitors Bureau.

There are 960 hotel rooms in the area, Rust said.

When the Fairfield Hotel opens in the fall, with another 88 rooms, there will be more than 1,000 rooms in the area, Rust said.

Tourism industry officials say the 100th running of the Indianapolis 500 has generated demand for hotel rooms not seen since the 2012 Super Bowl, according to The Indianapolis Business Journal.

Officials at tourism promoter Visit Indy said the 33,000-room metropolitan market has been a "virtual sellout" since March 15.

Visit Indy Vice President Chris Gahl told the Indianapolis Business Journal that many downtown hotels are commanding rates 30 percent to 40 percent higher than a year ago in May.

CEO Jim Dora Jr. of General Hotels Corp., which has 781 hotel rooms in the area, says his downtown and airport hotels have been sold out for more than two months.


 All 7,100 downtown Indianapolis hotel rooms, and clusters on all sides of town, sold out by mid-March, with downtown hotels commanding four-night stays and suburban hotels requiring a minimum stay of three nights, Gahl said.

Many downtown Indianapolis hotels are commanding rates 30 percent to 40 percent higher than in May 2015.

"All the hotels surrounding and within (Interstate) 465 were sold out by March 15," Gahl said. He said that's eight weeks earlier than it has for any May in the recent past.

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway has announced that all of the nearly 250,000 reserved seats are sold out.

Late cancellations cause a few hotel rooms to pop up from time to time on internet hotel room search engines, Dora said.

"Those are the normal coming and going with any big event," Gahl said. "Those rooms will get gobbled up pretty quickly."