Football can make quite an impact on hotel performance: A new study shows that in 2015 alone, the National Football League had a net impact of $77 million on hotel room revenue.
But football’s impact goes beyond room revenue to encompass hotel food-and-beverage, and beyond professional teams to include college teams.
The latest hotel brand to capitalize on the national love affair with football is Four Points by Sheraton, which just kicked off the second installment of its Four Points Ultimate Fan Experience in partnership with Coca-Cola.
This series of free tailgating events will hit 10-college football game days this fall. Each tailgate will feature an official Four Points & Coca-Cola tent with seating and TVs for game watching, tailgate games including life-size Jenga and Plinko, Coca-Cola beverages and more.
Following last weekend’s kickoff, the Four Points Fan Experience will travel to games across the country from the end of September through the beginning of December. Each tailgate is free and open to the public, and the schedule includes: Penn State at Michigan (9/24), UNC at FSU (10/1), Ohio State at Wisconsin (10/15), Ole Miss at LSU (10/22), Florida vs. Georgia (at Jacksonville on 10/29), Michigan at Iowa (11/12), Arkansas at Mississippi State (11/19), Michigan at Ohio State (11/26) and Oklahoma vs. Oklahoma State (12/3).
Another brand that has joined the college football bandwagon is Holiday Inn Express, which introduced its Pancake Selfie Express mobile breakfast food truck that creates laser-printed selfies on pancakes. From September through December, the truck will travel to tailgate parties at Southeastern Conference football games alongside SEC Nation, the SEC Network’s traveling pregame show that is hosted live from a different SEC campus on game day each week. Through the brand’s official sponsorship of the SEC and the SEC Network, football fans will have the opportunity to make their own pancake selfie and win SEC-related swag, including tickets to the SEC Championship Game in December.
Hotel Ella in Austin, Texas, which is located near the University of Texas football stadium, offers a complimentary buffet by Goodall’s Kitchen, cocktails, beer and wine, shuttles to and from the stadium, and pregame broadcasts on flat-screens under the tent on the hotel’s front lawn.
The Hilton Santa Clara (Calif.) is the closest hotel to Levi’s Stadium, which is the home of the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers and the site of the annual Pac-12 Football Championship Game. The hotel offers several tailgating menus along with indoor and outdoor spaces.
And Hotel Ivy in Minneapolis raised the stakes with its $12,000 Ultimate Tailgate Package, which included one night in the hotel’s 1,900 square-foot penthouse, three additional hotel rooms for tailgating friends, three bottles of Dom Pérignon, a food and beverage credit, six tickets on the 40-yard line to the Sept. 1 Minnesota Vikings game against the Los Angeles Rams, and private limo transportation to and from the game.
The Hotel Ivy also offers a Penthouse Tailgate Package for $5,000, available for any Vikings game. That package includes a one-night stay in the penthouse, a bottle of Dom Pérignon and a food and beverage allowance of $1,500. No Vikings tickets are included in this package.