This weekend, the College Football Playoff kicks off on four college campuses across the U.S.
Hotels in Eugene, Oregon; Oxford, Mississippi; College Station, Texas; and Norman, Oklahoma, prepare for what seems like a golden opportunity: adding an extra home game — with the season on the line — during a traditionally quiet December weekend. But when we analyzed the hotel performance data from last year’s College Football Playoff games, the results didn’t directly reflect the stakes on the field.
Starting in 2024, the College Football Playoff expanded its format from four teams to 12 teams, with the first four games hosted on the campus of the higher-seeded team. Texas, Penn State, Notre Dame and Ohio State were the first campuses to ever host a College Football Playoff game.
Despite the hype and attention to these games, the hotels in these markets didn’t have the lift many would have expected. While year-over-year data for RevPAR, ADR and occupancy in these playoffs markets spiked compared to the same weekend in 2023, the playoff weekend’s performance fell significantly short of what hotels typically see for a regular season home game in these markets. In fact, RevPAR for the playoff weekends in these markets was much closer to when their respective teams were either playing aways games or on a bye week (“Non-Football Weekends” below).
Weekend hotel RevPAR for the playoff games on average was 32% lower than the home games in these markets, and 49% lower than the top regular season home games in each market. For the University of Texas in Austin, we excluded the top weekend from this analysis — due to overlap with the Formula 1 race in the city that same weekend — and there was still a 60% decline in RevPAR for the playoff weekend compared to the Longhorns' next highest regular season home game.
Instead of RevPAR emulating the top home game weekends of the regular season, we observed that on average RevPAR on playoff weekends mirrored weekends where there was no home game in these markets. Playoff markets actually averaged a 9% lower occupancy rate than the non-home game weekends throughout the season.
There a several factors that can help explain why the hotel performance for playoff weekends didn’t stack up to the regular season. The week of the playoffs, Week 51, is historically soft for these markets, and while playoff weekends showed year-over-year spikes — RevPAR rose 143%, ADR jumped 50% and occupancy increased 21% — they couldn’t match the demand of fall Saturdays.
Regular-season home games benefit from alumni gatherings and campus traditions that amplify demand; elements largely absent during playoff weekends. The mid-December timing of the College Football Playoff competes with holiday travel and budget constraints, while the short booking window — less than two weeks — limits planning for overnight stays. Add reduced ticket allocations for visiting fans and longer travel distances, and the result is a muted hotel lift despite the high stakes on the field.
As the College Football Playoff enters its second year under the expanded format, four new campuses will host first-round games this weekend. These events present another opportunity to evaluate how the shift to on-campus playoff matchups will compare to the hotel demand brought in by the regular season.
Cole Martin is an analytics and insights specialist at STR, part of CoStar Group.
This article represents an interpretation of data collected by CoStar's hospitality analytics firm, STR. Please feel free to contact an editor with any questions or concerns.