(J. Stephen Conn/Flickr)

For the past few months, the Grand Aleutian Hotel has been operating nearly at capacity.

Oilmen, researchers, and even a billionaire media mogul have booked rooms there this summer. And next week, a wave of political and Native leaders from across the region will be taking over the hotel as part of the Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association’s Wellness and Governance Conference.

While the conference has been planned for over a year, the event left some guests in a bit of a scramble. According to a Granite Construction representative, the company was concerned that its road crew would be left without lodging. That could have caused further delays to a project that is already behind schedule.

Tom Enlow is the general manager of the Grand Aleutian, and he says the Unisea Hospitality division has managed to resolve the issue.

"We are doing everything in our power to accommodate them," says Enlow.

Granite Construction overflow is expected to stay in Unisea bunkhouses until the APIA conference wraps up.

This isn’t the first time this year the Grand Aleutian has had to manage a full house. Enlow says that the hotel operated at 95 percent capacity in August, a record for the Grand.

"There are days when we have to turn people away because we are totally booked, and we never like to do that," says Enlow.

Demand for guest rooms is only expected to increase in the coming years. Even now, the hotel doesn’t see room availability going up until the winter holiday season, a time of year that’s traditionally slow. Enlow adds that next summer is expected to be just as busy as this one.

That’s got the Grand Aleutian thinking ahead.

"We’ve got some preliminary thoughts in the works for an expansion," says Enlow. "I can’t go into too much of that, because they really are preliminary thoughts that, hey somebody really needs to expand here or put up another hotel."

The Grand Aleutian is Unalaska’s only full-service hotel.