“If it hadn’t been for the Tournament, it would have been a relatively quiet week (for us),” said Roger Doty, general manager of the Holiday Inn Carrier Circle hotel.

The Holiday Inn, the Sheraton and the Renaissance hotels have all noticed a large increase in business from this time last year due to the Tournament, but the increase is similar to when SU hosted the Tournament in 2005.

SU will host the East Regional of the NCAA Division I men’s basketball championship. The games will feature matchups Thursday between No. 2 seed West Virginia and No. 11 seed Washington at 7 p.m. and between No. 1 seed Kentucky and No. 12 seed Cornell at 10 p.m. The winner of both games will play Saturday. All games will be played at the Carrier Dome and are part of the cause of the increase in business for hotels throughout the Syracuse area.

David Heymann, general manager of the Sheraton Hotel, said he estimates the increase in business to be 78 percent for the Sheraton, and the hotel will be booked in full on Thursday and Saturday. That percentage is about the same as when SU last hosted the Tournament in 2005, he said.

The Sheraton was selected by SU, which owns the hotel, to house members of the media.

“It’s a logical place for media for its proximity to the Carrier Dome,” Heymann said.

While the Sheraton is the closest hotel to the SU campus, the Holiday Inn will house Cornell’s men’s basketball team. The Cornell team traveled just 55 miles to SU, compared with the farthest team, University of Washington, which had to travel 2,730 miles, almost 50 times the distance of Cornell.

The Holiday Inn will not only house Cornell students and alumni from Ithaca, but alumni from across the country as well, Doty said.

Doty, the regional manager for the Holiday Inn, said most Cornell alumni want to come back to Central New York. It has been nearly 30 years since the last time Cornell went this far in the Tournament, which he said is an incentive for fans to stay at the Holiday Inn.

During the Tournament, the Holiday Inn’s business is double that of this time last year, Doty said. He also had been getting calls since last year about the Tournament, and most bookings started in October, he said.

Across town, the Renaissance Syracuse Hotel is housing mostly fans instead of media or the basketball teams. Still, Jerry Keohane, director of sales and marketing for the Renaissance, said business has gone up by 20 percent.

“We try to keep (fans) here as long as we can,” he said.

The Renaissance is decorated with orange and blue balloons to offer guests a welcoming, sports-themed atmosphere. Keohane said this week has been particularly busy, but the hotel also recognized some of the variability that comes with the business of offering rooms to fans of teams that could lose a game at any point during the weekend.

As far as business for hotels is concerned, Keohane said, Saturday’s occupancy rates are “all based on who wins.”