On April 8, multiple cities across North America will experience a celestial event that occurs very rarely — a total eclipse, or a trajectory of the Moon’s orbit around the sun during which it completely blocks its face, will traverse 13 states as well as multiple parts of Canada and Mexico.
The occurrence has been dubbed “The Great North American Eclipse” because, after April, a total eclipse will not be visible from any part of North America until 2044.
Related: The top destinations to visit in 2024 are completely unexpected
As often happens with few-times-in-a-lifetime events, ticket prices to and hotel stays in cities where the eclipse will be best visible have started to sell out months ahead of time.
Students in Chicago watch the last total eclipse that occurred in 2017. Alexandra Wimley/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service.
Chicago Tribune/Getty Images
There are both cheap and expensive cities from which you can see the eclipse
Travel-booking platform Hopper released a report showing that airplane tickets to cities such as Erie, Penn. and Little Rock, Ark. from nearby places like Chicago and Philadelphia can cost up to $900 despite falling within the $200-$300 range during normal times.
The cheapest city to fall within the eclipse’s path is Dallas, to which a ticket from another large U.S. city currently starts at $244 while Erie is the most expensive with flights starting at $704. The eclipse path ends in Canada’s Montreal and flights there start at $434.
For New York City residents, the nearest city within the eclipse’s direct path is Buffalo. While plane tickets currently appear online with an upcharge of more than 800%, Amtrak trains are pretty much sold out — going to book a ticket through the online platform for the dates between April 7 and 10 prompts a pop-up reading that all tickets are “sold out for the date you selected.”
‘Rates are at $400 all the way up to $1,000 at this point…’
Both in Buffalo and in nearby cities, hotel prices are also spiking to unseen heights as more than one million travelers are expected to come into the city to catch a glimpse of the total eclipse. Back in February, hotels like the Westin Buffalo (WAB) were charging $715 for a night on April 7 and 8. This is more than two times the normal rate and, as we get closer to the event, prices could spike to several thousand dollars or not be available at all.
Even motel chains such as Motel 6 and La Quinta have been charging over $300 a night months ago. Local tourism board representatives and hotel managers said that some people have secured their places more than a year before in order to avoid the kind of last-minute rush and pricing spikes that typically occur only for major sports events like the Super Bowl. For both Buffalo and many other smaller cities on the eclipse’s path, April is still a slow period before the summer tourists start coming in.
“We’ve never had an event like this that we didn’t have to bid on, that’s going to attract hundreds of thousands of people,” Patrick Keller, the CEO of Visit Buffalo Niagara, told a local branch of Spectrum News in February. “[Hotel] rates are at $400 all the way up to $1,000 at this point.”
