What do hotel searches tell us about bowl interest?

Interesting piece on hotel searches being a barometer for team's interest in a bowl match up in the Dallas Morning News:

In the entire states of Oklahoma and Alabama, hotel searches for New Orleans were up 379 percent in Oklahoma and 127 percent from Alabama.

While I get what they are doing, I think it completely ignores two very important factors. First, plenty of Alabama fans have contingency plans for the Sugar Bowl every year. Sure, many Tide fans thought they'd be in Pasadena a bit later in January, but I feel pretty confident plenty of them also had plans for New Orleans, especially after the Iron Bowl.

Second, there is a decent number of Alabama fans that have family/weekend places within a very easy drive from New Orleans.

Now, the Peach Bowl is a bit more interesting:

Texas A&M is playing Duke in the Chick-fil-A bowl, and Atlanta-area searches from Texas have increased just 25 percent which is right in line with the increase in North Carolina where many Duke fans will be traveling from.

The Duke thing doesn't surprise me. I think the writer doesn't get the spread of Duke's fan base around the country (also it doesn't appear they get just how not passionate Dukies are about football), especially in Atlanta. Now, the Aggie's numbers are surprising. I'd have thought they'd show out big time to party with JFF for what has to be Manziel's last game as an Aggie. Maybe they are as ready for him to move on as he is to move on.
TD
(h/t Mr. SEC)

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