Now that we can officially say that Comic-Con is happening “this year”, all eyes turn toward the two biggest sales yet to happen: Open Registration and the General Hotel sale. While we don’t have an answer on when those of you who struck out in Preregistration will get to try for badges (our guess: March 12), we do now have information on the General Hotel Sale.

We have confirmed with a representative for the Comic-Con hotel sale vendor, onPeak (who merged with Travel Planners), that the General Hotel Sale will take place on Tuesday, April 5, 2016 — and while we couldn’t confirm a time, the sale historically happens at 9AM PT/12PM ET.

There’s no official word from Comic-Con International, so it’s possible that the date could change – but as of now, onPeak is able to confirm the April 5 date for the San Diego Comic-Con General Hotel Sale.

This date falls right in line with last year’s sale, which took place on March 24, 2015 – but as the convention is two weeks later this year, it makes sense that the hotel sale would also be two weeks later.

The hotel sale is the best way to ensure that you get a room at Comic-Con. A recent report by the San Diego Convention Center Corporation revealed that CCI holds 62,922 nights at area hotels during the convention – the vast majority of rooms in the area, which Comic-Con International is able to secure for locked-in rates for attendees. Those that aren’t included in the reserved convention block typically go for extremely high prices, and are far out of the area and not included on the Comic-Con shuttle stops.

Now that we know when the General Hotel Sale will occur, the biggest question is — will there be changes made to the process of securing a room, after last year’s widespread issues and errors which affected a large number of attendees? At the time, Comic-Con International issued a statement to us that the “incident has cast a shadow on our efforts but we are working with Travel Planners to ensure this type of situation does not occur again.” Let’s hope that all involved can pull off a more successful sale in 2016.



There’s still no word yet on when Open Registration will take place, but in the past, it has always happened before the General Hotel Sale. Last year’s sale took place on February 21 when the convention was earlier in July — but in 2014, when the General Hotel Sale was on April 8, Open Registration took place on March 15. That could put this year’s sale at sometime between February 27 – March 19, which the most likely candidate being March 12, 2016.

Will you be trying for a room on April 5? Let us know in the comments.