@ncmotherofthree, even the chain hotels will jack up rates. You will never again feel so lucky to pay so much for a nondescript room! Of those, we stayed at the Wyndham Garden Inn and the Hampton. The Hampton is walkable to campus, which is nice, but the Wyndham was quieter and had larger rooms. Stayed in B&B’s 502 Main and Llewellyn Lodge and preferred 502 Main.
Some of D’s friends’ families used VRBO to rent houses if they were bringing younger children or planning to entertain. We were very grateful to be invited to dinner sophomore year at the home D’s sorority sister’s family rented, as restaurant reservations are also hard to come by.
Our D was admitted RD, so we didn’t start looking for a room until the spring, by which point EVERYTHING in Lex was booked. We wound up staying 40 minutes away in Staunton, which is a charming small town and was much less expensive, but the drive was not fun when we had a freak snowstorm! According to the W&L website, some faculty opened up rooms in their homes in exchange for donations to Habitat for Humanity, but I was too nervous to wait until the last minute for this to be an option for us.