Lynchburg hotels not filling up for Obama’s inauguration

As hotels in the Washington, D.C., area filled up, people hoping to be in town for Barack Obama’s inauguration on Jan. 20 started looking well beyond Capitol Hill for a place to stay.

While reservations have headed down U.S. 29 clear to Charlottesville, where many hotels are booked solid, the business hasn’t trickled down to the Lynchburg area.

The owners and managers of major hotels in and near the Hill City said they don’t have unusually high reservation rates for the days surrounding the inauguration — but they have at least had some inquiries.

Brian Knopp, regional sales manager for the Wingate by Wyndham and Days Inn on Candlers Mountain Road, said people are shopping Lynchburg, but not buying.

“I’ve had several groups that have requested information about booking rooms,” he said. “It seems from my perspective that they’re trying stay a little bit closer to D.C.”

And apparently the line ends somewhere near Charlottesville.

“Oh yeah, we’re booked,” said Doris Oliphant, sales manager of the Hampton Inn of Charlottesville, off U.S. 29. “It started right after the election. We’ve got a lot of groups coming.”

Charlottesville is about 120 miles from D.C.

Other far-flung locales seeing a surge in inaugural hotel bookings include Philadelphia (140 miles away), Richmond (105 miles), Williamsburg (150 miles), Waynesboro (140 miles), Luray (92 miles) and Fredericksburg (50 miles).

Jonathan Miller, director of the Craddock Terry Hotel in Lynchburg, said some hotels in the Harrisonburg area have filled up, but “So far, to my knowledge, it hasn’t hit Lynchburg yet.”

Paul Heckman, general manager of the Hilton Garden Inn on Wards Road, said the hotel is about 40 percent full for some of the days around the inauguration. That’s a normal reservation rate for Hilton hotels several weeks ahead, he said.

He said the hotel might put together a package to promote the hotel to inauguration travelers.

Courtney Hunter, the group sales manager for Lynchburg’s regional tourism program, said she hasn’t had any calls from groups looking to stay in Lynchburg for the inauguration. However, the area will be featured in a brochure that the Virginia Tourism Corp. will distribute this month at stops along Virginia’s interstates, she said.

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.”

The group’s Web site, Virginia.org, lists several inauguration and “presidential” packages, but none are in the Lynchburg area.

“There’s just a great amount of interest in presidential politics right now,” said Tamara Talmadge Anderson, a Virginia Tourism Corp. spokeswoman. “We have so much presidential history and so many connections to presidential politics.”

Media General News Service contributed.