London is booking up as the royal nuptials of Prince William and Kate Middleton near, but the city is far from sold out for the April 29 wedding.
"You can still get rooms in London starting at just over $120 a night," said Meredith Pearson, the U.S. communications manager for Britain’s tourism agency, VisitBritain.
In central London, she said, there were still hotels available for just under $250 a night.
Travel Bound said that it still had availability at 208 hotels on April 28, 191 hotels on April 29 and 203 hotels on April 30.
Travel Bound has seen less than a 5% increase in the number of travelers who have made hotel reservations in London during the wedding compared with this time last year, "although the number of nights those passengers stay in London has increased by more than 20%, which might be attributable to the wedding," said Richie Karaburun, president of Travel Bound and GTA/North America.
Virgin Atlantic said it had seen an increase in inbound passenger bookings during the period of the royal wedding, but it still has seats available.
About 600,000 visitors, both domestic and international, are expected to descend on London on the wedding day, according to VisitBritain, and the daytrippers are expected to spend between $50 million and $80 million. For the month of April, VisitBritain anticipates there will be between a 10% and 20% increase in visitors.
Tour operators have reported an uptick in bookings surrounding the event.
"Since the royal engagement and announcement of William and Kate’s wedding date, we have booked 25% more Monograms London vacation packages this spring than we did during the same period in 2010 and 2009," said Steve Born, vice president of marketing for the Globus Family of Brands.
Born noted that there is only limited availability left for Monograms' April 27 departure of its A Week in London package.
Media frenzy
The increase in visitor numbers and spending surrounding the royal wedding remains similar to what VisitBritain predicted in November, when the engagement was announced.
But the real opportunity, Pearson said, will be the extensive coverage of the event by news outlets.
"All the major networks are going to be there," Pearson said. "We’re trying to give them ideas of stories outside of just London. Kate and William are the perfect ambassadors for us because they’ve lived all over the U.K."
She added, "For many people when they think of Britain, they just think of London. And it’s our job to expose people to the rest of the U.K."
Following the royal wedding, VisitBritain will launch a global campaign called "Britain, You’re Invited."
The campaign was originally scheduled to go live immediately following the wedding, in May, but Pearson said it has been pushed back to a fall launch in the U.S.
"For us, with the huge amount of media relations that we’ve been doing, our money would be better spent doing it in the fall," Pearson said.
She said the contents of the campaign are still under wraps. But the advertising and marking efforts that will define the campaign will be anchored by the three major events taking place in London: the wedding and, next year, the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and the Summer Olympics.