Super Bowl Brings Surge Of East Coasters To Minnesota

MINNEAPOLIS, MN — Don't look now, but football fans throughout the East Coast are preparing to descend en masse on Minnesota. Airbnb said it experienced a "massive surge" in bookings to the Twin Cities this week once the New England Patriots and Philadelphia Eagles secured their spot in the big game.

Between Sunday and Monday, there were more than 500 Airbnb bookings in the Twin Cities, according to the company. That's ten times more than average.

The short-term rental platform said that 15 percent of bookings were from guests living in the New England states, while 18 percent were from people living in Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey.

Airbnb has been preparing for the Super Bowl surge since February 2017, when it announced "PROJECT 612," an initiative to double the number of hosts in the Twin Cities from 1,000 to 2,000 by Feb. 4, 2018. As of Tuesday, the size of the Airbnb host community in Minneapolis and Saint Paul is just shy of 5,000 residents.

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Photo credit: AP Photo/Steven Senne