For the first time, the popular televised singing contest will be holding auditions in San Diego. They are July 30, right on the heels of Comic-Con International, the city’s biggest convention, which will attract more than 120,000 fans from July 25 to 29.

In recent years, about 98 percent of the county’s hotel rooms have been rented during Comic-Con weekend, making it the highest-occupancy weekend of the busy San Diego summer season, said Steven Johnson, spokesman for the San Diego Convention Center, which is hosting Comic-Con.

Add potentially tens of thousands of American Idol contestants showing up early for admission tickets and mix in the Del Mar racing season which will be in its second weekend when the two pop culture events converge and there could be a perfect storm of a lodging crunch, local experts say.

I think a ‘no room at the inn’ will occur on Saturday the 28th, said Robert Rauch, chairman of the San Diego County Hotel Motel Association and general manager of the Homewood Suites By Hilton in Carmel Valley. If someone doesn’t currently have a room for that night, they are going to have a tough time finding one.

While technically there shouldn’t be a lodging crunch American Idol auditions are July 30 at Qualcomm Stadium, while Comic-Con ends July 29 at the downtown convention center the unknown is how many people will be traveling to San Diego and from how far.

San Diego will be the only West Coast stop for auditions for the Fox show’s seventh season, making it more likely that some singing hopefuls will travel here from other regions and plan on a long weekend stay. On July 28, officials with the show will begin handing out wristbands to gain entry to Qualcomm two days later.

Cathy Anderson, chief executive officer of the San Diego Film Commission, which negotiated with American Idol to bring the often top-rated show here, speculates that 10,000 to 40,000 people could attend the auditions. Those numbers are based on Anderson’s polling of other cities’ film commissions that have handled Idol events.

In 2006, Idol had two West Coast audition locations instead of the one that will be held this summer; the closest to San Diego last year, at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, drew an estimated 20,000 people and the other in Seattle was also well attended.

But when Idol went to Tampa, Fla., more than 40,000 people used hotel rooms over two days, Anderson said. In Houston, more than 25,000 people attended over two days.

We are the only West Coast audition city, so we could really be hit hard by this, she said.