Philly leisure hotel bookings looking to break record

The summer is lodging good numbers for Philadelphia’s tourism industry. 

From January through June, hotels sold 416,000 room nights to leisure travelers — up nearly 4 percent from a year ago, said Nancy Serban, director of research for Visit Philadelphia.

“We don’t usually look at the numbers for the first half of the year because we thought leisure tourism was mostly a summer phenomena into fall,” she said. “But this year, we looked at the numbers and demand was way up.”

Some 17,000 room nights to be exact, according to Cara Schneider of Visit Philadelphia. And that doesn’t include a single one booked for the World Meeting of Families and accompanying papal visit at the end of September.

“July, August, September, October are our busiest times of the year in a normal year, so we are almost certain to break a record this year,” Schneider said.

With all that demand, room prices are also up — between 5 and 9 percent.