Plenty Of Rooms Still Vacant For Visitors Coming To See Pope
By Diana Rocco
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- One month from Pope Francis' visit to Philadelphia and the city still has plenty of room for visitors making the pilgrimage.
"I don't know why we haven't sold out. They might be apprehensive. I know there's a lot of vacancies in the hotels downtown," said SEPTA GM Casey.
SEPTA is the only transportation in to Center City that weekend and they still have 200,000 papal passes for sale, which is more than half of the 350,000 available.
"It's not going to be the long waits or the long walks that have previously been reported."
Trains will be be shuttling visitors directly from the airport to Center City and that now includes those who live locally and want to drive and park.
At an Airbnb meeting Thursday there were plenty of hosts still looking for tenants.
"Don't think you can get $1,000 a night," said Scott Pawlowski.
Empty hotel rooms and private vacancies are forcing hosts to drop their rates or negotiate.
"We started out around $500 a night got few hits stay for longer period of time," Pawlowski added.
Julia Engstrom has four units for rent in Rittenhouse square on Airbnb. In all, she's hosting 14 guests coming from California, Texas and as far away as Holland.
"I did lower the price because I had it on there for a couple months now and I did notice I wasn't getting any questions," she said."As soon as I lowered the price to a fair market value, I got hits like crazy."
