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Will you travel to London for the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton? Be prepared to pay royally for the privilege.
When the royal couple set the date for their big day in late November, hotel-comparison websites noticed a bizarre phenomenon in their bookings and searches. “Hotels.com reports that searches for rooms on and around April 29 have jumped 60% year on year, and discount-hotel website LateRooms.com says hotel bookings for the week of April 29 are three times higher than for the week before,” TIME’s William Lee Adams reported in December.
(More on TIME.com: See NewsFeed’s complete coverage of the royal wedding.)
Now, with 1.1 million people expected to travel to the capital to attend a wedding they’re not even invited to, Londoners are preparing to get the most out of their international visitors.
The Waldorf Hilton, located a mere 15-minute walk away from Westminster Abbey, will fetch $560 per night during the wedding weekend, compared with the $430 it’s charging during the previous week. Hilton Worldwide Inc.’s Trafalgar Square and Green Park hotels are already fully booked. “Whenever there’s a huge surge in demand, which this will be, there will always be pressure,” says Miles Quest, spokesman for the British Hospitality Association.
(More on TIME.com: See how to turn Kate Middleton into a princess.)
Some Londoners will become part-time landlords, as they have put up rooms for rent on websites such as London Rent My House and Gumtree, the U.K. equivalent of Craigslist. One such wanna-be landlord has set the price for a week’s rent at $2,835. That’s more than double the average rent for a two-bed apartment in the same area.
Cashing in on the royal wedding will certainly bring big bucks to London. (Via Bloomberg)