Few Columbia hotel rooms are available for August eclipse

Lodging is becoming scarce for visitors planning to travel to the Midlands to view next month’s solar eclipse, tourism officials say

Many of the 124 hotels in Lexington and Richland counties along with campgrounds and state parks are booked up or have only a handful of rooms left for the Aug. 21 esclipse, local tourism officials say.

Some of the 11,519 hotel rooms in the area have been reserved since last fall, reservation managers say.

For Midlands residents, the bookings are an indication of the volume of tourists expected to descend on the area for the eclipse. Some have estimated that up to 600,000 people will travel to the Columbia area.

“When it comes to being booked up, it’s never been this far out,” said Megan Brasington, sales director at Wingate by Wyndham in Lexington.

The 97-room hotel sold out for the eclipse in the spring; normally, sellouts happen just a week or two before major events such as University of South Carolina football games, she said.

All 96 rooms at the Fairfield Inn in northeast Richland County are sold out for Aug. 20 and Aug. 21, which is double the normal occupancy for Sunday and Monday nights, sales manager Amber Martin said. “That’s a real nice boost, a very nice bonus,” she said.

State parks also will host more visitors than usual, with no spaces available at Dreher Island on Lake Murray and a few spots available at Sesquicentennial in northeast Richland County.

Reservations total nearly 2,200 for campsites, cabins, picnic shelters and other facilities for the weekend in the path of the eclipse, an increase of nearly 550 over the same weekend in 2016, officials said.

Interest in the Columbia area is strong because at 2 minutes and 36 seconds, it will have one of the longest expected blackouts on the East Coast, said Merritt Manning, marketing director at the S.C. State Museum on Gervais Street.

The museum is a partner in efforts by local tourism officials to promote the area as a place to see the eclipse. More than 50 events are planned over four days.

“If things go right, this will be a phenomenal show that everyone will remember,” said Phil Gaines, state park director with the state Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism.

“This is bigger than any ball game,” said Dale Yon, office manager at Edmund RV Park in Lexington County, which has a waiting list for its 100 spots. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime happening.”

This story was originally published July 10, 2017 at 12:58 PM.