Local hotels are booked solid this weekend, and more than 3,500 parents and guests who flocked to Hanover for Commencement and Reunion are being housed in campus dormitories.
With guests arriving for the graduation ceremony and for special reunion celebrations, rooms get scarce.
Matt Marshall, general manager of the Hanover Inn said the guests "fill up [the] Hanover Inn and 15 other hotels in the area."
According to Marshall, many parents begin calling to make a reservation for graduation as soon as their child has been accepted to the College.
Eugene Bellows, owner of the Chieftain Motor Inn, said he gets calls up four years in advance.
Many hotels do not take reservations any further than a year in advance, but once the weekend opens for reservations, the vacancies fill up quickly.
"We usually sell out within the hour," Comfort Inn receptionist Karen Contrell said. "There are other weekends where we are booked but none where we are booked so quickly."
According to Best Western receptionist Nathan Woods, hotels can be booked for Commencement and Reunion weekend as early as the Monday following the previous year's graduation.
Many parents, friends and invited guests of the graduating seniors will be staying in campus dormitories, as well as local hotels.
For $28 a person, the College will house guests in dormitories where they will live "much like the students do," according to Director of Housing Services Lynn Rosenblum.
The Office of Residential Life will be working around the clock from the June 11 to June 21 to check in guests and to keep the rooms only recently vacated by students clean.
Although every dorm on campus will be in use, according to Commencement and Reunion Housing Coordinator Corynn Gilbert, the invited guests will not be braving the Choates or the River this year and they will not have the pleasure of residing in the East Wheelock cluster.
The East Wheelock cluster is reserved for the Class of 1948, and members of the Class of 1933 are housed in the Lodge.
The student workers assisting with the graduation ceremony will be residing in the Choates Cluster and Hinman Dormitory. The other River buildings will only be used if there is an overflow of guests, Rosenblum said.
Although the graduates are allowed to invite an unlimited number of guests "We haven't had any problems housing everyone," Rosenblum said.
