Many hotels fully booked ahead of busy weekend

Thousands of people will be pouring into the Coachella Valley this weekend, and many of the large hotels are already fully booked.

Things are starting to come together for the start of Modernism Week at the Community And Meeting Place (CAMP) for the event in Palm Springs.

“Last year we brought in about 65,000 people, that’s an incredible amount of revenue,” said Chris Sears CAMP Coordinator for Modernism Week.

Local businesses are getting ready to cash in on all the tourists.

“It’s great news for the whole valley because people come here and they enjoy Palm Springs, they buy merchandise, they go out to dinner, and they get hotel rooms,” said Jeffrey Bernstein, co-owner of Destination PS which has a booth set up for Modernism Week.

Along with Modernism Week, the Riverside County Fair and Date Festival starts this weekend in Indio. And President Barack Obama is hosting the the ASEAN Summit at Sunnylands.

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Many of the large hotels in Rancho Mirage and Palm Desert are already fully booked with travelers from Southeast Asia. Trying to find a hotel room online in our area is next to impossible and the few remaining rooms are very expensive.

Hotel managers are hoping the people who come in for the economic summit will like the Coachella Valley enough to where they’ll want to come back for vacations.

“It definitely creates a lot of exposure especially the Asian markets we are getting so many tourists coming in, so you are looking at people coming in from Brunei, the delegation coming in from Cambodia, the delegation from Vietnam, Malaysia and so on,” said Aftab Dada, chairman of PS Resorts.

Modernism Week starts Thursday morning, the Riverside County Fair starts Friday, the same day President Obama flies into town.

What are your plans for the weekend? Tell us in the comments below or let Joe Galli know on Facebook and Twitter!