Why Scottsdale is challenging Nashville as America’s next bachelorette party capital

  • Terryce Blanchard wanted a one-stop destination for bachelorette parties – anywhere but Nashville.
  • Scottsdale, Arizona enjoys warm weather and plenty of space for large parties and activities.

Terryce Blanchard did not want just organize a bachelorette party.

She wanted an unparalleled experience that would take her away from the cold shores of her home state of Michigan and even further from the busy streets of Nashville, Tennessee.

“Everyone here goes to Nashville,” Blanchard told Insider. “I was trying to do something different.”

Blanchard knew wherever she was going it had to be larger than life – a must for a bride traveling with 18 companions.

For her, nowhere fits the bill better than Scottsdale, Arizona, an affluent suburb in the Phoenix metro area. A city that offered her a surplus of restaurants, plenty of outdoor activities, and a selection of spacious Airbnbs to choose from to host a large wedding party.

“We wanted to be outdoors and in a space where we didn’t need to have a bunch of hotel rooms.” she says. “Scottsdale has a bunch of great spaces for people. So that’s how we figured it out.”

Go for Nashville. After the capital of Tennessee became the singles destination of choice in recent years, Scottsdale could steal the crown. The New York Times reported that more than 11,600 parties are planned for Scottsdale this year. Although that’s just a fraction of the 30,000 planned for Nashville, Mike Petrakis, founder and chief executive of the bachelorette planning site Bach, told the NYT it could potentially eclipse bookings for Nashville. Indeed, the city’s popularity has increased during the Covid-19 pandemic, which has helped boost local businesses and strengthen its housing market.

Blanchard fears that Scottsdale’s new reputation will tarnish its luster.

“I feel like it’s going to be overdone, kind of like Nashville,” she said.

Bride’s burgeoning popularity in Scottsdale boosts tourism

For Scottsdales business owners, the rise in popularity is more than welcome news.

Especially for Casey Hohman, the owner of the Scottsdale Bachelorette party planning company, who told Insider he’s seen “a huge uptick in party requests.”

The traffic helped him grow his business.

“This year has been absolutely crazy,” he said. “We had set a target of booking 500 parties for the year and we reached it at the end of April. We were totally caught off guard by the popularity of this year.”

Hohman says the success of the Scottsdale bachelorette party stems from two main factors – lenient Covid-19 protocols and one historically high number weddings across the United States.

“Scottsdale was one of the few places open for business in terms of very few mask mandates, not very big restrictions on restaurants and bars,” he said. “So we’ve seen a lot of people redirect their parties from places like Vegas and Miami to Scottsdale.

“You couple that with the fact that there are more weddings this year than since 1984 and Scottsdale is becoming such a cool new destination for people in their twenties — it all kind of started,” Hohman said. .

Indeed, Arizona has seen an increase in tourism and migration of home buyers. According to the Arizona Office of Tourism, visitor spending and overnight stays outmoded the national average in 2021. In addition, data from real estate brokerage Redfin also shows that of all US cities, Phoenix was the most popular migration destination last year, followed by the cities of Dallas and Orlando.

The increase in migration has encouraged more owners to list their properties for sale or make them available like Airbnbs – both have helped push home prices across the state to historic highs.

Although it has made Arizona’s housing market more unaffordablehe’s helped brides like Blanchard celebrate their bachelorette parties in comfort and style.

“I think it’s a good place for people with a wide variety of interests,” she said, adding that “it was the best weekend” of her life and that if she had the opportunity, she would do it again.

Have you moved to a new city? Contact this reporter at [email protected].

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