How to find dates of big events in any city? (e.g. to avoid price surge during trade fair)
Is there a resource that warns me for (almost) any city / destination when my travel dates coincide with some big event there?
Illustrative example: Say I want to travel to Frankfurt and I'm fairly flexible in my dates. Once a year Frankfurt hosts the international automobile trade fair IAA and during that time most hotels in the city are booked up, even hostel bed prices triple well beyond EUR60 a night and you can figure 1-2 hours to wait for a dinner table if you did not book days in advance. Since I am flexible I would like to avoid this hassle and travel another time, so I want to know, what are the times to avoid?
Now for Frankfurt I do know this and could look up the dates of the IAA and avoid those, but then there are thousands of other small or big conferences or trade fairs in Frankfurt every year and I don't know how for every single event how big of an impact it has. And in fact I am looking for a resource that could tell me for any city which are the dates to avoid, i.e. not only trade fairs in Frankfurt but also say Oktoberfest time in Munich. These are all examples I know to avoid, but I seek similar information for places I am not familiar with.
Some ideas:
- One could monitor hotel prices throughout the year for a given high-end hotel, but that is somewhat cumbersome.
- One could contact the local tourist info, but that means asking and waiting for a reply and I would prefer to look it up right on a website.
- A good guidebook might have that info but I was more looking for an online-resource.
Best Answer
At least for Germany (which you used in your examples), the hotel booking site hrs.de is a good source. You can change your language at the top right if it is not automatically detected. You can enter a longer period, and if a major event falls into this period, you'll get a warning. Unfortunately that won't work if no hotel is found at all for the whole period, but it can still be useful.
For example, if I entered Munich from August 1st to November 1st this year, I'll get the warning "Oktoberfest 9/17/16 - 10/2/16".
Or for Frankfurt (Main), same period, the warning lists "Ecostyle 8/27/16 - 8/30/16 and Automechanika 9/13/16 - 9/17/16".
Unfortunately this does not seem to include any other countries, as my tests for Paris and Geneva indicated.
Pictures about "How to find dates of big events in any city? (e.g. to avoid price surge during trade fair)"
How to get FREE Shiny Rocks in Gorilla Tag
More answers regarding how to find dates of big events in any city? (e.g. to avoid price surge during trade fair)
Answer 2
if I use [http://www.booking.com] for example for the next weekend in Paris 14.-16.7. (14.7. Bastille day) I get the following warning:
Paris is a top choice on our site with travelers for your selected dates (59% reserved). Tip: Prices might be higher than usual for the dates you've selected. Why not try again with these alternatives? Jul 12 - Jul 14 From € 35 Jul 13 - Jul 15 From € 36 Jul 14 - Jul 16 From € 33 Jul 15 - Jul 17 € 2 less Jul 16 - Jul 18 € 2 less
So I guess with booking you get warnings if the town is full, but it looks as if they don't give you a reason why.
Sources: Stack Exchange - This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Exchange and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Images: Lachlan Ross, ready made, Anna Nekrashevich, Elina Fairytale