The Outrageous Hotel Booking Policy Guests Should Look Out For When Traveling Around Big Events

Over the past few years, rising costs of things like concerts and sporting events have made news headlines on multiple occasions. Intertwined with these headlines are entertainment companies Live Nation and Ticketmaster, which merged in 2010 and control a huge percentage of the live events industry. But as fans direct their ire toward major ticket sellers, hotels have increased prices too.

The hospitality industry has definitely noticed that plenty of people are willing to travel in order to see a sporting event or concert. The latter in particular is a viral travel trend that Taylor Swift fans helped create. This sounds harmless, but hotels can adopt "event pricing" policies when such major events are scheduled. To name just a few examples, during Swift's 2024 Eras Tour and when Oasis embarked on their monumental reunion tour in 2025, hotels near each venue charged higher rates on the days surrounding the shows. It happened during the 2024 Paris Olympics too. Event pricing is frustrating enough, but in some instances, hotels have applied such prices to reservations made before a nearby major event is actually scheduled to occur.

In November of 2025, the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) reported on a shocking story wherein a woman named Erika Mann booked a hotel for a Formula One race in Montreal. At the time of booking, there were two possible weekends for the race. The hotel initially set the price at $4,300. Once Formula One officially set the race dates, Booking.com and the hotel in question claimed that the price was too low by mistake and Mann's reservation jumped to $17,000. This new price is more in line with what the hotel usually charges during big events, and blamed a "synchronization error" with Booking.com for the falsely advertised $4,300 price.

Unfortunately, the CBC found that there is no law preventing hotels from claiming that an original price was an error and then charging a higher rate. This is just one reason why travelers need to be aware of events taking place when they plan on visiting any given destination. Event pricing applies to annually held events, too. Think Oktoberfest in Munich or Festival Fringe, which turns Edinburgh into one of the best destinations in Europe for live music. If you want to find cheaper places to stay when traveling specifically for a special event, you might have to search a bit further from the action.