Indy 500 selling out area hotel rooms

Indy 500 selling out area hotel rooms

INDIANAPOLIS

The 100th running of the Indianapolis 500 is generating demand for hotel rooms not seen since the 2012 Super Bowl, according to tourism industry officials.

The 33,000-room metropolitan hotel room market has been a “virtual sellout” for nearly two months, said Chris Gahl, vice president of tourism promoter Visit Indy.

All 7,100 downtown hotel rooms, and clusters on all sides of town, sold out by mid-March, with downtown hotels commanding four-night stays and suburban hotels requiring a minimum stay of three nights, Gahl told the Indianapolis Business Journal.

Many downtown Indianapolis hotels are commanding rates 30 percent to 40 percent higher than in May 2015.

TSA finds record number of firearms

Travelers flying out of U.S. airports have set a new but unsettling record.

In the week that ended April 22, airport screeners uncovered 73 firearms from passengers, breaking the previous record of 68 firearms discovered on travelers last fall during the final week of October, according to the Transportation Security Administration.

All but five of the guns were loaded, the TSA said. (Travelers can transport guns in checked luggage but not in carry-on bags.)

The 73 weapons included a .22-caliber pistol found at Boston’s Logan International Airport and a .357 magnum revolver at San Antonio International Airport.

Impact of parks

GLEN JEAN, W.Va.

The National Park Service says southern West Virginia’s three national parks contributed more than $64 million in benefits to the local economy in 2015.

Economists with the National Park Service and the U.S. Geological Survey analyzed visitor spending at parks across the nation, including the New River Gorge National River, Bluestone National Scenic River and Gauley River National Recreation Area.

The report says people visiting the three West Virginia parks spent more than $56 million in nearby communities in 2015. That spending supported 846 jobs.

Together, the parks drew more than 1.3 million visitors in 2015.

Nationwide, the report says 31 percent of visitor spending was for lodging, followed by food and beverages at about 20 percent.

Geography quiz

Q. Which country does not border Russia: Georgia, Kazakhstan or Pakistan?

A. Pakistan. It borders Afghanistan, China, India and Iran.

‘Southwest Effect’ on foreign routes

For years, airline industry analysts have used the term “Southwest Effect” to describe how airfares offered by the nation’s major carriers decline after Southwest Airlines starts to compete with those airlines on specific domestic routes.

Now that Southwest Airlines has started to serve international destinations, it seems that the same “Southwest Effect” extends to foreign routes, according to a study by Rick Seaney, chief executive of the travel site Farecompare.com.

Fares for flights to Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean dropped as much as 25 percent after Southwest joined the competition, the study found.

But Seaney’s analysis found that certain routes to Mexico and Central America were also pushed down when ultra-low cost carrier Spirit Airlines entered those markets.

Combined dispatches