The NACAC National College Fair ran free and open to the public in Exhibit Hall D at the Oregon Convention Center on 18 and 19 October 2026. The organiser sent schools a movement plan for the coaches that carried their parties to the door. It filed a hotel rate for the same fair on the exhibitor page, for one property, with a September cut-off.
The two documents answer two questions. The letter answers a counsellor's question about where a bus parks. The rate answers an institution's question about where its staff sleeps.
What the busing letter carries
NACAC's letter to schools is the operational record. It dates both sessions, names the hall at 777 NE Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, Portland OR 97232, and prints a route sheet with miles on each leg.
Four turnouts take the drop-off and the pick-up. Two sit on NE Holladay Street and two on NE Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard. A driver who passes one loops the building on three right turns and rejoins the Holladay side.
Coaches park at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, 1.83 miles by road from the hall on the OpenStreetMap routing service. The letter sets one rule on the pick-up. A coach cannot wait in the zone, so the party calls the driver when every student stands at the door.
TriMet keeps its use of the turnouts. The Portland Bureau of Transportation cones off the longer MLK turnout when traffic builds for the streetcar.
The letter carries the bag screening and the barcode. Students register ahead and present the code on a phone screen or on paper. On-site registration covers anyone who arrives without one.
Two windows, six and a half hours
Sunday ran 1:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Pacific. Monday ran 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. The pair adds to 6.5 hours of exhibition time.
The Sunday close and the Monday open sit 16.5 hours apart. A party working both sessions takes a bed on the night of 18 October.
The attendance figure the organiser issues to exhibitors is 5,000. It covers both days with no split between them.
The rate sits on the exhibitor page
NACAC publishes one hotel. The Hyatt Regency Portland at the Oregon Convention Center, 375 NE Holladay St, Portland OR 97232, carries a guest room rate of $169 a night plus fees.
Reservations close on Friday 25 September 2026. That date sits 23 days before the Sunday door.
The same page states that NACAC does not share exhibitor contact details with its contracted host hotels, and that those hotels will not approach exhibitors for payment.
It carries the set-up windows, Saturday 17 October 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. and Sunday 18 October 11:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., the estimated attendance of 5,000, and the venue's standard daily parking rate of $15.
Three changes a district can make
A counsellor who files the busing form, sends a coach to the museum lot and walks a party through the door finds no rate on the page in hand.
Print the rate on the page that carries the turnouts. A counsellor opens that letter to plan coach transport. One line naming a property and a price removes a phone call from every school in the region.
Set the cut-off against a school's approval cycle. A district that needs a purchase order cleared before it commits a room has 23 days to run that cycle. A cut-off that closes before the coach is booked releases no room at all.
Split the 5,000 across the two windows. One figure covering 3.5 hours and 3 hours gives a revenue manager nothing to size the Sunday night against. Two figures would.
The venue dropped its own page
The convention center's event page for this fair returned a Page Not Found on 23 October 2026, a body of 37,637 bytes. The venue sitemap lists 181 addresses and four October 2026 events, and the fair is not among them.
A property that checks the district's calendar for its own event finds the organiser's page and nothing from the building.
The fair costs nothing to enter. That term suits a college search, and it puts the cost on transport and on the night. Portland publishes the transport in detail. The night carries one line.