With the remaining days until commencement weekend dwindling away, area hotels and restaurants are preparing for the influx of new graduates and their friends and families.
The weekend, which kicks off May 16, brings in a flood of customers to these places, and has made excessively early reservations a necessity.
“It’s our busiest weekend of the year,” Steve Zanoni, vice-president of sales and marketing at the Madison Concourse Hotel, said, adding that most people start making reservations at the Concourse at least a year in advance.
Although some popular restaurants follow suit with the Concourse and take reservations far in advance, others have adopted a new reservation system specifically designed for the graduation weekend.
Restaurant Magnus, for example, begins accepting reservations May 1, just several weeks before commencement. Interested customers must make a $100 deposit with their reservation, and cannot book for more than twelve persons at a time.
“We’ve got the reservation system down to a science. It levels the playing field and makes it fair for everyone,” Restaurant Magnus manager Prentice Berge said, noting that practically all of their seating has already been reserved.
Berge added that nearly 100 people were waiting outside Restaurant Magnus when they started to accept bookings this year, with the earliest customers showing up around 7 a.m.
Berge sees several benefits to this system, one being that it frees the restaurant of reservation hassles during the busy weekend, thus allowing them to focus all of their attention on their customers, something Berge describes as a “paramount” concern at Restaurant Magnus.
“We’re kind of the original strokes on some ideas,” Berge said, noting that other restaurants, such as other graduation weekend hot-spots the Blue Marlin and the Tornado Room, have adopted a nearly identical system.
L’Etoile Restaurant and Harvest, other popular dining spots, do not use this same system, but instead open bookings up within two months of commencement on a first-come, first-serve basis.
Nonetheless, both restaurants have seen a steady influx of eager customers over the years, and also are nearly fully booked for the May 16 weekend.
“People are celebrating a milestone in their lives, and they want to do it in a special place,” Harvest owner Tami Lax said.
Like the Madison Concourse Hotel, the Edgewater Hotel has some of its busiest times during commencement weekend, Director of Marketing Judy Alberts said, and added that most customers book their rooms far from the actual date of graduation.
“We’ve been an icon in the community,” she added, explaining that the hotel’s family-oriented attitude has made it such a popular spot for graduation festivities.
Despite the possibility of cancellations, Zanoni and Alberts suggest that those interested in booking a room at either hotel for graduation should do so as soon as they know of a date.
