Few Spaces Remain As Fieldays near

Accommodation is filling up as farmers and football fans prepare to pour into Hamilton next week.

An overlap of Fieldays and the Fifa U-20s World Cup has seen much of the accommodation snapped up, but there are still some rooms remaining in the city's motel sector. 

Hamilton's i-SITE website showed six, of the 60 accommodation providers listed, had space on June 10 - the day Fieldays would begin. There were six rooms available on June 11, the day of the first round of Fifa U-20s playoffs. 

Fieldays, which runs until June 13, coincides with six Fifa matches, including a quarter final on June 14. 

However, Waikato Motel Association president, and Ulster Lodge Motel Owner, Narinder Sagoo said the pressure to find beds for visitors to the city had not been "overwhelming".

He had received one phone call from the i-SITE to find three rooms for a group of people associated with Fifa during Feildings around four days ago. "In terms of my own expectations, I'm not astounded."

"At the end of the day when you've got a team from Portugal, Senegal, Qatar, you can only have a certain amount of people that affiliate with those particular countries within the Waikato or the greater Waikato."

Waikato woman Fiona Budd would be opening up her Puketaha farmstay during Fieldays through Look After Me, a New Zealand homestay network that matches accommodation seekers with homeowners.

Budd said she had been involved in Look After Me for about a year. She had two rooms available, which had not been filled. There was still a chance someone would approach her with a last minute request, she said. 

Fieldays usually attracted overseas guests, she said.Prices for rooms advertised on Look After Me range from $45 to $165 per night.