'100% sold-out': Hotel, rental demand soars for Dreamville Festival

For those lucky enough to get tickets, it might be difficult to find a place to stay if you haven't already booked a hotel.

As of Tuesday, nearly all hotel rooms were booked in downtown Raleigh.

“It was pretty crazy with bookings,” Sheraton Raleigh General Manager Joel Fuller said. "Probably within a handful of hours...the majority of our rooms were sold out.”

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“This definitely has a really big draw. This is probably the busiest (weekend) we've seen in a handful of years,” Fuller said.

With the festival offering 20,000 more tickets per day this year compared to 2022, local officials say the increased demand is to be expected.

“We ran about 92% occupancy last year county-wide," Visit Raleigh Executive Vice President Loren Gold said. "We were almost completely sold out."

Haven Thorn, a communications manager for Airbnb, said local hosts welcomed nearly 2,000 guests and collectively earned more than $400,000 during the festival last year. While this year’s numbers are not available yet, the company did share where people are booking from for this year’s festival.

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Dreamville organizers say they plan to continue hosting the festival in Raleigh. Fuller says he expects the high demand trends to continue in the future.

“I think it's only going to get busier and busier as the festival continues year after year. It'll continue to be exciting. We'll find ways to handle the growth of it,” he said.