WASHINGTON — This may be a “sensationally unpredictable” U.S. election season, but travelers are confidently betting that they’ll see their candidate’s hand on the Bible on Inauguration Day.
Washington, D.C., will be buzzing during the week leading up to Jan. 20, 2025, when either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump will be sworn in.
At least five months ahead of the 60th presidential inauguration, a majority of the city’s luxury hotels appear to be fully sold out from Jan. 14 to Jan. 21. According to multiple online searches that Bloomberg News ran from late September through Oct. 9, only a handful have remaining availability — at gangbuster prices, even for entry-level rooms.
The Kimpton Hotel Monaco in downtown D.C. has rates starting at $2,800 a night, the nearby Sofitel is charging upward of $1,400, and the Ritz-Carlton Georgetown is going for around $1,700, representing prices hikes of up to 1,047 percent. None of those prices are for rooms larger than 450 square feet; in mid-February 2025, when the buzz has died down, the same accommodations range from $244 to $656.
A spokesperson for Hilton Hotels Worldwide Holdings Inc. confirmed that if Hilton.com is showing as sold out — as 17 out of 25 of the company’s D.C. hotels currently appear online — the hotels likely have no availability over those dates. Other luxury properties in town — including the Four Seasons, Rosewood and Fairmont — also appear to be sold out.
While Destination DC, the city’s tourism marketing arm, says it’s normal for presidential inaugurations to stoke tourism, chief executive officer Elliott Ferguson II said this election cycle has already commanded “significant interest” that stands apart from recent history.
Because of pandemic restrictions, he said, “the public hasn’t been able to participate in (an) inauguration since 2017.” Worth acknowledging, too, is the history tied to the potential of the first female president.
And it’s not just the traditional glass ceiling that Vice President Harris would be breaking; her Black and Indian roots magnify the historic importance of her potential inauguration.
To that point, Google searches for “2025 presidential inauguration” show a spike starting on July 21 — the day Harris received President Joe Biden’s backing to take his place as the Democratic presidential nominee.
For Nicole Ratliff, a U.S. expat who resides in France with her 14-year-old twins, it was that moment — when Harris was moved up on the presidential ticket — that inspired her to book an international trip back to her onetime home of Washington, D.C.
“I would have booked regardless if it was Biden as well, but with Kamala it’s a historic moment that I want my kids to witness,” she said, adding that she’d long felt regret over taking such historic events for granted when she lived in the capital.
Exclusive data from Booking Holdings Inc.’s metasearch site Kayak shows that Ratliff is hardly alone. Interest in D.C. during the week of Jan. 17 is five times greater in 2025 than it was in 2024, based on searches for flights to Washington. While the company was unable to pull data comparing that to search volume leading up to the 2017 inauguration, Google analytics suggest that there also was a frenzy of interest in Inauguration Day travel after Donald Trump accepted the Republican nomination on July 22, 2016. This year, that interest has been sustained since Harris’ confirmation on the ticket; in the 2016 election, the spike in interest halved almost immediately and dwindled further within days.
MLK Day adds to buzz
Election season aside, Washington, D.C., has been drawing record tourist crowds: In 2023, the nation’s capital received 25.95 million visitors, representing a 4 percent increase over its pre-pandemic levels and resulting in $10.2 billion in visitor spending.
The boom is set to continue: Hotel occupancy was up 3 percent year to date through July 2024, compared with 2023, a spokesperson for Destination DC confirmed.
Adding to the buzz of a Jan. 20 inauguration: Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a federal holiday, this year coincides with the presidential swearing-in. That same day, an inauguration parade will make its way down Pennsylvania Avenue, adding to the pomp and circumstance.
Those who choose to venture to the nation’s capital for a three-day weekend, albeit in frigid weather, will find plenty of additional reasons to do so, starting with a slew of enticing restaurant openings in the city — including Dogon at the Salamander hotel, by chef Kwame Onwuachi of New York’s acclaimed Afro-Caribbean restaurant Tatiana; La’Shukran at Union Market, a Middle Eastern bistro from 2024 James Beard Outstanding Chef Michael Rafidi; and Arrels, a Spanish restaurant from Michelin-starred chef Pepe Moncayo.
On the attractions side, The People’s House is a free immersive museum that opened in September 2023 and focuses on White House history. A crowd that’s enticed by the inauguration will no doubt enjoy a section where you can sit inside a full-scale replica of the Oval Office.
Short-term rentals, too
Another way to quantify the demand for the weekend before inauguration is by looking at short-term rentals, which also show unprecedented occupancy figures and rates.
Fifty percent to 61 percent of all short-term rentals in D.C. are already booked up for Jan. 18-20, according to data from Beyond, a vacation rental revenue-management system, whose listings capture around 88 percent of the city’s total inventory. That’s a fivefold increase over 2024 figures. (Beyond didn’t have data available for comparison with the last “normal” inauguration in 2017.)
Prices are soaring, too. In Arlington, Va., the average daily rate is pacing at $421 for Jan. 19 and 20, while rates in the Dupont Circle neighborhood have reached more than $700 per day — twice the average you’d have paid during that period in 2024, according to Beyond data.
“We didn’t expect to see this, honestly, given the high level of uncertainty,” Beyond CEO Julie Brinkman said of the volume of early bookings. Normally, she said, people book their trips in November, after the election’s outcome has been determined. Now that flexible cancellation policies are commonplace, she suspects travelers are booking with the sense that they have nothing to lose.
With both candidates commanding a passionate base, there’s reason for both hotels and vacation rentals to expect significant waves of cancellations on Nov. 6, or whenever election results are made final. But don’t expect providers to slash their prices as a result. Rooms given up by one party’s loyalists are likely to be quickly scooped up by the other’s.
