For the second time in the past three weeks. Hotel rooms in Erie County, and in particular, downtown Buffalo are in very short supply.
The reason? Yes, there's the Thanksgiving holiday, which is a major factor, but there's also Sunday's Buffalo Bills vs. San Francisco 49ers, coupled with this weekend's World's Largest Disco and two Buffalo Sabres home games combined, they are making for a busier than usual holiday weekend period for the hotels and travel operators such as airline carriers and even Amtrak.
Elizabeth Carey AAA of Western and Central New York's Director of Public Relations acknowledges that this year's Thanksgiving weekend is a bit of an outlier because of the aforementioned factors.
"At this time of year, the NFTA was saying Buffalo becomes kind of like an inbound type of airport, because people who have moved away want to come back home for Thanksgiving with their families," said Carey. "They want to go to the Turkey Trot and the different activities. So a lot of people coming into Buffalo this weekend, coming back home, are coming in for different activities."
That means while some locals are going out of town, many ex-pats will be back and travelling around the region.
"Hotels are definitely going to be full this weekend, and a lot of people out and about," she said. "So it's a great time to show off everything that Western New York has to offer.
Carrie suggests how to avoid return travel crowds. People should extend their stay in the Buffalo Niagara region until late Monday or even Tuesday.