At the Renaissance Harborplace, there were rooms available for Jan. 20, the night of Barack Obama’s inauguration as the 44th president of the United States.
Provided, that is, that you called on election night.
“As soon as the election was called, which was essentially 1 a.m., there was a flood of reservations that came in between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m.,” said Chris Orr, the Renaissance’s director of marketing. “We were sold out on election night.”
It’s a story repeated across town by some of Baltimore’s biggest hotels — sell-outs within hours or days of Obama’s win, and limited availability in the days around his inauguration.
The Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association has tracked hotel availability for the days surrounding Obama’s inauguration, and as of Wednesday afternoon, only a handful in the Baltimore area had rooms available on Jan. 20. Many were booked for the two days preceding the event as well.
“We wish we had an inauguration every year,” said Nancy Hinds, vice president of public affairs for BACVA. “The reaction to this inauguration is overwhelming … in the past it was maybe more people from around this region, but now it’s from around the country.”
Orr pointed out that the lack of rooms on Jan. 20 might have discouraged large groups from visiting for several nights around that time.
“There is the other side of the coin,” he said. “Any group business that was considering coming here during that time frame now will not because of the compression. There’s a revenue spike, but it’s soften by that phenomenon.”
But any business lost in that way is more than made up for by the off-season spike, hotel bookers said.
“We’ve never had overflow rooms. Washington usually fills up but it doesn’t usually overflow to us,” said Mary Sipes, senior sales manager at the Hyatt Regency. “January is typically a pretty slow month, so this puts a good bonus on our numbers.”
