Busy February weekend sparks discussion on Mitchell's hotel room numbers
Only a few of the many events organizations outside of Mitchell are being courted by the Mitchell Sports & Events Authority (SEA), and a particularly busy weekend in February led to teams canceling trips to Mitchell.
The three-day
Wesleyan Indoor Winter Classic futsal tournament,
held the weekend of Feb. 22 at Dakota Wesleyan University (DWU), had cancelations with teams expressly stating they canceled due to no rooms being available, according to SEA board member Tim Smith, who shared information from a Dakota Wesleyan Teammakers meeting held on Monday, March 10. On the same weekend, a swim meet, a hockey tournament and an auction were held in Mitchell. The futsal tournament, swim meet, and auction received SEA grants.
"Mitchell is in a luxury problem. It's great everyone is coming to Mitchell," futsal tournament leader and DWU head men's soccer coach Nicolas Reinhard told the Mitchell Republic.
It's not just a matter of events over-booking the same weekend in Mitchell, but also whether Mitchell hotels can support the larger events. The SEA seeks to fill hotel rooms during the months of lowest occupancy, from November through May.
The July 2024 addition of My Place Hotel near Cabela's added 63 more rooms to Mitchell and to the BID No. 4 tax district. There are 1,015 rooms across 16 lodging establishments in Mitchell, according to the STR hotel report provided by the Mitchell Chamber of Commerce.
Based on the nine hotels in Mitchell that provide data to STR, the average number of rooms filled on a nightly basis is about 35% occupancy or 355 rooms in January 2024 and a peak occupancy in August 2024 of about 76% or 771 rooms.
"Marketable rooms for youth events brings us down to 690, but the number I use for RFPs (request for proposals) is 895," Mitchell city coordinator for public events Aaron Hieb said.
Hieb suggested that the registration period for events gives participants enough time to book hotel rooms ahead of time, including the weekend with the futsal tournament, the swim meet and the hockey tournament.
"Overall, I thought it was a very good weekend for Mitchell," Hieb said.
In comparison, Mitchell has about twice the hotel rooms of other South Dakota cities. Huron has nearly
219 rooms available
across four lodging establishments, Yankton has
365 rooms across six hotels,
Brookings has more than 514 rooms across seven hotels, and the Chamberlain area has 368 rooms across six hotels.
A topic of discussion at the Mitchell City Council has been courting state tournaments for play at the Corn Palace.
The total room requirements
for the state boys basketball Class AA tournament is 965 rooms and for the state girls basketball class AA is 765.
The Mitchell Sports and Events Authority Advisory Board (SEA) met on Tuesday, March 11. Hieb informed the board how some events will be passed on due to not having enough hotel rooms in Mitchell.
There are 161 matching leads for Mitchell venues within PlayEasy, a sports and venues matchmaker platform. 156 of those were passed on because the event organizers require more hotel room nights than Mitchell can provide, the venues are smaller than the event requires or the date would overlap with events already booked in Mitchell. That's a pass rate of 96.89% of potential events through the PlayEasy platform, or in other words, about 3% are able to be pursued.
PlayEasy is an annual purchase of $4,995,
which renews in January.
"The criteria that we were unable to fill was the hotel rooms requested for the event. The majority of the 156 asked for more than 1,000 room nights per event. So obviously, we're going to pass on those," Hieb told the SEA board.
Mitchell is short 141 to hit that 1,000-hotel mark, according to Hieb.
Even with a total capacity of 1,000 hotel rooms in Mitchell, a certain amount of those rooms will be booked at any given time. For the month of January 2024, 355 rooms were booked. To meet the higher demands of a potential event requiring 1,000 rooms in January, there would have to be a total of 1,355 total rooms in Mitchell to also meet the existing demand.
After
initial positive feedback,
the 2026 or 2027 Move United Education Conference has not contacted Hieb back for further consideration. Hieb is actively pursuing American Junior Golf Association and 5v5 soccer tournaments.
Fewer teams at the futsal tournament than expected was due to a mix of teams alternating which tournaments they go to each year and how many events were held the same weekend in Mitchell, according to Reinhard.
"We know it's not going to happen again, and we're excited for next year," Reinhard said. "The city supports us so much."
The SEA awards grants to sporting events that increase nightly hotel patronage in Mitchell, and is funded through tax monies from the $2 per night per hotel room within the BID No. 4 Tax District, which consists of 12 lodging establishments with 28 rooms or more.
Mitchell Mayor Jordan Hanson suggested that more small-to-medium sized events may be the answer to the hotel capacity problem, and that an increase in events may prove to hotel owners that it's time to build.
"Once that happens, then we can start going after the larger events. I'm glad that the hotel owners made huge investments in Mitchell. You have to put everything in its place first. You can't do something out of order," Hanson said.
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