Campbell County Commissioners not happy with high hotel room prices for Camporee

GILLETTE (WNE) — Rates for hotel rooms in Gillette skyrocketed as volunteers with the International Pathfinder Camporee booked reservations for the event that will be in Gillette from Aug. 5 to 11, and Campbell County Commissioners aren’t happy about that.

During a Joint Powers Lodging Tax Board meeting last week, Commissioner Kelley McCreery said that the county’s legal counsel has said these prices are just the result of a free market. But he worried about the precedent this would set.

“The way I see it, if they get away with it on this, anything that we have in the future that they know about, they can do the same thing,” McCreery said.

Jessica Seders, executive director of the Campbell County Convention and Visitors Bureau, said that when the hotels have been approached about the rise in hotel prices, the response has been that “there was demand for the rooms, and demand is what caused the increase.”

But beyond prices going up, the commissioners are concerned about another potential issue. Seders said she’d heard from Camporee that there were about 150 room reservations that were canceled.

“These were reservations with confirmations that were made a long time ago,” she said.

A person with Camporee kept track of emails that were sent back and forth with the staff at a hotel they’d booked a room at a while ago.

“They were told they didn’t have the reservations anymore, and (the hotel) opened the hotel rooms back up and other Camporee folks took the rooms,” she said.

Seders added that the rooms were re-booked at a higher rate than the original reservation.

Seders said other large events will be watching Campbell County as it hosts the Camporee, and that these issues aren’t doing Gillette any favors.

This story was published on March 26, 2024.