May 13--CHAPEL HILL -- When guests at Chapel Hill's hotels checked out on Monday morning following the weekend's UNC commencement, many of their rooms were already booked for next year's ceremonies.

For local hotels, graduation weekend is one of the busiest every year, and traditionally most have seen 100 percent occupancy.

Guests typically can make reservations at least a year in advance, but each hotel has established a different way to handle the barrage of calls received when booking opens up for the weekend of commencement.

"We call it our Super Bowl," said Anthony Carey, the general manager of The Siena Hotel. Carey said guests could reserve rooms on the first Monday of the calendar year for the following year's graduation.

After booking opens up in January, Carey said it typically took three months to reach maximum occupancy for the next year's graduation weekend.

"By having it that early, it's a very nice pace of reservation booking, so we're able to give the caller greater attention," he said.

While The Carolina Inn also sees maximum occupancy for graduation weekend, the booking pace is much more rapid.

Casey Dunlevie, a rising senior at UNC, said her family always stayed at The Carolina Inn when visiting from her hometown of Atlanta. She said this year's graduating seniors told her the hotel began taking reservations the Monday after commencement at 9 a.m.

"My mom had been calling The Carolina Inn for a while in the morning and couldn't get through, so I started calling on my cell phone and our house line," Dunlevie said. "They put me on hold for 30 minutes, but I finally got through and made a reservation."

Carolina Inn representatives were so busy Monday, they weren't able to comment on the booking rush.

Laurie Paolicelli, the executive director of the Chapel Hill/Orange County Visitors Bureau, said The Carolina Inn filled up faster than other hotels because of the convenient location it offered.

"The Carolina Inn is always full because you can park your car, you can walk to commencement, you walk to brunch. It's a uniquely positioned hotel," Paolicelli said.

Nicholas McCoy, the front office manager at The Franklin Hotel, said that in 2007 -- in its first year of business -- the Franklin had a system similar to that of The Carolina Inn, allowing guests to make reservations for the following year on the Monday after commencement.

But this year, McCoy said the hotel's staff would turn to technology to avoid the overwhelming flood of callers. Guests will not be able to make reservations for next year's ceremony until June 2, and bookings will be made primarily online.

While hotels don't have a problem filling rooms when booking initially opens up, Paolicelli said it was important that they were actually at maximum occupancy during the weekend of commencement.

She said that blocking off rooms in advance opened up the possibility of cancellations throughout the year. Although there were ways to safeguard against that risk -- for example, many hotels have lengthy waiting lists -- Paoicelli said Chapel Hill was facing increasing pressure this year to fill all of its 1,400 hotel rooms.

Because Durham and Wake County have added more than 1,200 rooms in the past 18 months, Paolicelli said the bureau was anxious to see how this year's hotel occupancy in Chapel Hill compared to that of 2007.

At least one hotel isn't worried about competition from Durham: Carey said The Siena Hotel relied on guests from UNC as well as Duke University, which also held its commencement Sunday.

"We get a nice mix, and it's actually a lot of fun," Carey said. "It's the one time UNC and Duke get along really well."

For people like Dunlevie attempting to find a room for next year's commencement, it might appear that there is no lack of potential hotel guests competing to find a room in Chapel Hill.

However, Paolicelli said the Visitors Bureau kept a watchful eye on the weekend of commencement and would have to become increasingly proactive in finding ways to keep hotel rooms full.

"It's tricky because Chapel Hill is a college town," Paolicelli said. "One can expect it to be full, but with the competitive playing field, we can't just rest on our laurels."

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