No matter which college squad wins the 2011 Big East Women’s Basketball Championship, Hartford’s hospitality team is already declaring itself a leading scorer with more than $2 million estimated to be spent in the host region during the five-day tourney.
The Hartford Hospitality Task Force says close to 2,500 room-nights in area hotels have been booked by alumni and fans, officials, athletes, cheerleaders and bands of the 16 teams vying in the Division 1 regional contest that begins at the XL Center with Friday’s quarter-finals and ends with Tuesday’s championship final.
This is the eighth consecutive year that Hartford has hosted the Big East Women’s tournament.
Well over 40,000 people are expected to attend the 15 games over five days, the largest attended women’s conference basketball championship in the country, according to Curt Jensen, sports marketing manager at the Greater Convention & Visitors Bureau.
The spending outlook for the 2011 tourney is in line with the estimate for the 2010 event, when the Big East raised the number of qualifying women’s teams to 16 from 12.
 “The only variable is how well fans of the visiting schools travel,” Jensen said
The task force, that includes the GHCVB, XL Center, the city of Hartford, and others, also is promoting regionwide special events and destinations surrounding the tourney on the championship website, www.bigeast.org/wbb.
