Hotel rooms still available in Quincy but going fast in anticipation of Trump appearance in Mendon on Saturday

QUINCY — Have you heard the rumor that every hotel room in Quincy is sold for Friday and Saturday night in anticipation of former President Donald Trump’s rally at the Adams County Fairgrounds in Mendon at 7 p.m. Saturday, June 25?

It’s not true.

But it likely will be true.

Trump, the 45th president of the United States, is coming to endorse Mary Miller in the 15th Congressional District Republican primary against Rodney Davis on Tuesday, June 28. Trump’s visit would be the first to Quincy by anyone who has held the office of president since Barack Obama, the nation’s 44th president, visited for two days on April 27-28, 2010, during his first term.

Dax Fohey is the general manager of the Town and Country Inn and Suites, a 92-room facility at 110 N. 54th, and president of the Quincy Hotel and Lodging Association. He asked general managers at other hotels in Quincy on Thursday morning if they had rooms available for Friday and Saturday night.

As of 11 a.m. Thursday, Fohey said the Quality Inn and Holiday Inn were sold out. The Fairfield Inn was sold out, but a few cancellations left a handful of rooms available. Stoney Creek had one room left. The Atrium has about 20 rooms available, and Town and Country Inn and Suites has about 10 rooms left.

“We could have sold them, but we were sitting on them just in case some of our regulars want to come in,” Fohey said. “We’ll release those rooms Friday morning.”

By the time Friday night rolls around, “most every room in town will be gone by then,” Fohey said.

Quincy has 798 available hotel rooms

Deb Carstens, general manager of the Fairfield Inn, 4415 Broadway, said the hotel received a nice bump in visitors this week because of the Pepsi Little People’s Golf Championships. The surprise visit by Trump will help greatly as well.

“It’s fantastic. We’ll take one of these every weekend,” she said. “It’s phenomenal. We certainly never turn away occupancy, and fortunately at this point in time, I’ve got the staff to handle it. Bring it on.”

The Quincy Convention and Visitors Bureau says Quincy has 798 available hotel rooms.

People are still calling hotels, hoping to snatch rooms made available by last-minute cancellations. 

“Once those rooms are cancelled, they are gone in less than an hour,” he said.

People making last-minute plans to visit Quincy should expect to pay much higher rates because of the scarcity of hotels.

“Any time your occupancy goes up, a lot of hotel systems are programmed to raise their rates automatically,” Fohey said. “It’s kind of like an airline. You get to 60 percent occupancy, your rates go up this much. You get 70 percent, they go up this much. We didn’t raise our rates because of this specific event. It’s simply supply and demand.”

Fohey said he sold one suite at his hotel for $295 on Thursday morning.

“The woman said, ‘I’ll take it. I don’t care,’” he said.

Cain: Airbnbs, hotels in Hannibal also filling up

Holly Cain, director of the Quincy Convention and Visitors Bureau, said her office has been receiving calls from people in multiple states.

“A lot of them are saying, ‘I’ve been to these rallies before, and I kind of wait and try to get a cancellation room,’” Cain said. “I’m seeing emails from our hotels saying they might have a couple rooms here and there, but they don’t expect that they’ll have by the end of the day.”

Cain also said the hotels in Hannibal, Mo., also are close to filling up, as well as local Airbnb locations throughout Adams County.

“I’ve heard that people do definitely follow (Trump) around,” she said. “What a great draw for Quincy. We always love new visitors who have never been here. I think that’s what we’re going to be seeing. It’s exciting.”

Fohey says Quincy’s hotels are sold out about less than 10 weekends a year. He had been expecting a slow weekend.

“We didn’t have anything going on,” he said. “Typically we have a wedding reception or something, and we’re full. So when this happened, we were about half full for this weekend. We thought we could give the staff a break.

“Then from June 10 to June 12, we doubled the number of rooms that were sold.”

The Holiday Inn, Stoney Creek and Town and Country Inn and Suites have ballrooms that attract weekend groups. Carstens said the Fairfield Inn focuses more on the weekday business travelers. 

“We really didn’t see much happening until (the rally) came up, so we’ll definitely take it,” she said.

Average person visiting Quincy will spend $250 per day

Cain says her office figures the average person visiting Quincy will spend $250 per day. A crowd that is expected to be as large as 25,000 people — many of them coming from out of town — would have an economic impact of several million dollars.

They’ll all be in Adams County in anticipation of seeing Trump. Some even hope to meet him personally.

“A lady walked in (to Town and Country Inn and Suites) this morning and had a letter in big thick envelope,” Fohey said. “I’m guessing 10 pages were rolled up in this envelope. She asked me if the Secret Service was staying here. I said I had no idea.

“She said, ‘Well, I wrote this letter to President Trump two years ago, and I never got a reply. So I wanted to make sure that he got it this time. If (the Secret Service) were staying here, I want you to give it to them.’ I told her I have no idea who is staying here. She walked out and said, ‘I’ll get it to him somehow this weekend.’”

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