Inauguration: no rooms at the inns

Travelers hoping to find a place to stay in Orange next month may find there's no room at the inn. Local hotels and bed-and-breakfasts are filling up fast with folks looking for lodging during next month's presidential inauguration.
Naturally, rooms may be hard to find in Washington and Northern Virginia for the Jan. 20 swearing-in of president-elect Barack Obama, but an increasing portion of the 4 million expected inaugural spectators are seeking lodging far outside the capital area.
Many of Orange county's bed and breakfast businesses are reporting demand.
"I didn't expect it to come this far south, but when it started to happen, we all said, 'What the heck?'" said Jack North, owner of the Mayhurst Inn. "All of the inns around here are seeing activity."
While some of the Orange County visitors are traveling to the inauguration, others are Washington residents who want to escape the crowds or who rented out their home for a couple of days to out-of-towners, North said.
Anyone who tries to book rooms at either of the two hotels in the Town of Orange for next month's inauguration will be out of out of luck. At the Red Carpet Inn, all rooms are booked for the entire week of Jan. 18.
And according to Kevin Clore at Orange's Holiday Inn Express, the hotel is completely booked for the night of the Jan. 19. And that's remarkable, Clore said. Typically, rooms are plentiful in mid-January. "It's usually pretty slow," he said.
The demand for lodging around the time of President-elect Obama's inauguration has rooms reserved around the Central Virginia area, and beyond.
Far-flung locales seeing a surge in inaugural hotel bookings include Philadelphia (140 miles away from Washington, D.C.), Richmond (105 miles), Williamsburg (150 miles), Waynesboro (140 miles), Luray (92 miles) and Fredericksburg (50 miles).
The new Best Western Charlottesville Inn and Suites in Ruckersville is reporting strong interest. Of the hotel's 120 rooms, 22 remain open for the night before the inauguration.
"We have four groups coming," said Ellen Williams, assistant general manager. "All of it is for the inauguration. I know that for sure."
The Best Western hotel in Zion Crossroads, meanwhile, has only one of its 84 rooms not yet booked for the night of Jan. 19.
"We're mostly booked up," said Christina Hinkle, an administrative assistant at the Louisa County hotel. "I'm positive it's all for the inauguration."
January tends to be a slow month for area hotels, tourism officials said. The unusual burst of bookings for the inauguration should provide a welcome windfall for local hoteliers amid the slowing economy.
The Virginia Tourism Corp., the state-funded entity that promotes tourism in the commonwealth, is working with Washington's tourism bureau to help find lodging for visitors. Plus, the agency is aiming to attract additional visitors by offering special tourism packages that capitalize on Virginia's reputation as the "mother of presidents."
"There's just a great amount of interest in presidential politics right now," said Tamara Talmadge Anderson, a VTC spokeswoman. "We have so much presidential history and so many connections to presidential politics."