With Baton Rouge hotels already filled with hurricane evacuees, visiting fans from the University of Florida will face a fruitless search for housing to attend Saturday’s game in Tiger Stadium.
The UF Athletic Department secured rooms for UF football players in Baton Rouge, but the staff will be staying in Lafayette and commuting to Baton Rouge for the game, said Natalie Gonzales, staff assistant in the athletic department. According to the Baton Rouge Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, which took a poll on Thursday of the availability of hotel rooms on Friday and Saturday, no rooms are available, which will pose a problem for fans planning to stay overnight in Baton Rouge.
“We normally do polls before big events,” said Paul Arrigo, president and CEO of the bureau. “It’s an unforgivable situation we’re all going through.”
Gonzales said the Gators originally had reservations at a hotel in Gonzales before Hurricane Katrina hit but they gave up the reservations so evacuees would have a place to stay.
“We don’t want to displace anybody,” Gonzales said. “We just started calling hotels.”
Gonzales and four other staff members from the athletic department flew to Lafayette to see if the hotels could accommodate both players and management, and Holiday Inn Select contacted them shortly after their visit to tell them that they had enough space for the team.
Fans are working with the different circumstances, said R.J. Stamper, assistant director of the UF Alumni Association. The Gator Club chartered flights that allow alumni to land in Baton Rouge 2.5 hours before the game. Alumni will fly back to Orlando after the game.
Renee Areng, vice president of Visit Baton Rouge, said fans whose reservations were canceled are on a list to get their hotel rooms. Non-evacuees cannot replace evacuees in hotels as long as the evacuees can pay the nightly rates, including taxes, or can guarantee payment through appropriate insurance coverage or by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, according to two executive orders Gov. Kathleen Blanco issued on Sept. 1.
“It’s tight inside each hotel, but this is the state we’re in,” Areng said.
Contact Leslie Ziober at [email protected]