NEW YORK, April 24 (Reuters) - If you think getting

tickets to a Taylor Swift concert or the World Series is tough,

try booking a hotel room in an American college town for

Graduation Day.

Toni Milbourne faced this before her daughter's graduation

from West Virginia University in May. Hotel room rates in

Morgantown doubled before the local event. In a nearby town,

prices more than tripled to $350 a night.

"It absolutely feels like price gouging," said Milbourne,

managing editor for a West Virginia newspaper. "People need to

be aware that companies are taking advantage of people in times

that should be a celebration."

Parents of college kids frequently suck it up, and not just

around Graduation Day.

Whether for Family Weekends or Homecomings, smaller

communities often get swarmed by visitors far beyond their

ability to handle them. Meanwhile, pricing algorithms for

airlines and hotels do what they were designed to do - crank up

prices when demand soars.

"A lot of smaller college towns might have 20,000 or 30,000

people, and maybe 2,000 hotel rooms," said Professor Chris

Anderson, who researches pricing, at Cornell University's Nolan

School of Hotel Administration.

"With crazy high-demand dates, like a college graduation,

all of a sudden you have 40,000 parents and guests arriving for

multiple days of festivities. Now you have a real imbalance of

supply and demand."

As a result, parents must pay super-high prices for hotels

and flights, if they are available at all.

To avoid this quandary, Shama Diegnan, a digital marketer

from South Orange, New Jersey, sprung into action for Parents

Weekend at a Midwestern college even before her younger son had

accepted the school's offer.

"It never occurred to me that these hotels may cost more

than in a major metropolitan city," said Diegnan. She was

stunned that one local hotel charged over $1,000 a night, up

from its usual room rate of about $100.

How can parents avoid Graduation Day nightmares? Here are a

few tips.

PREPARE EARLY

Many hotels typically take reservations a year in advance.

If your child is slated to graduate next year, start booking

now. As for Parents Weekends in the fall, you should have

already booked. If those dates are still not set, check the

university parents' Facebook group for updates.

Note that for such high-demand dates, hotels may be stricter

than usual, and may require prepayment for nonrefundable

bookings or set a minimum number of nights, Anderson said.

CHECK OUT ALTERNATIVES

Hotels have a fixed number of rooms, but homeowners on

Airbnb ( ABNB ) or VRBO may offer extra rooms, apartments or houses on

high-demand dates.

For Parents Weekend, Diegnan booked a $300-a-night Airbnb ( ABNB ) 10

minutes from campus, instead of a local hotel room at $500 or

more.

One caveat from Anderson: Some parts of the country, like

New York City, are stricter about short-term rentals, limiting

homeowners' ability to absorb huge influxes of visitors.

LOOK FOR SECONDARY MARKETS

Parents wishing to cancel nonrefundable hotel rooms are in a

tight spot. That is why options like www.gohoken.com have sprung

up.

"They specialize in having hotel rooms for high-demand

dates, and allowing people to offload prepaid rooms that they

don't need anymore," Anderson said. "It's like a StubHub

secondary market, but for hotel rooms."

Milbourne gave up on local hotels and plans to bunk at the

home of family members instead.

"I don't think hotels should be able to jack up prices in

moments like this," she said. "Not only is my daughter

graduating, but she spent four years on active duty in the Army.

This is a big deal for us."

(Editing by Lauren Young and Richard Chang)