Over 1 million expected to show up; hotels and air tickets are going fast
The inauguration at the Capitol (seen here) is 10 weeks away, but people are already clamouring for tickets. Bookings for hotels, airlines and bus tours have rocketed. -- PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
WASHINGTON: Tens of thousands of people across the United States will be scrambling this week for tickets to attend the Jan 20 swearing-in of President-elect Barack Obama, an event which is set to draw the largest inaugural crowd ever.
With the election of the nation's first black president and the enormous interest in the young, charismatic leader and his family, officials say the crowd could surpass the 1.2 million who attended president Lyndon B. Johnson's inauguration in 1965.
Key dates
Dec 9: Deadline for states to settle issues such as recounts or challenges.
Dec 15: Electoral College electors meet in each state to formally cast their votes for the next president.
As Mr Horace Mackey of Stone Mountain, Georgia, put it: 'There's no way I'm missing that.'
Although the inauguration is just over 10 weeks away, members of Congress, who will distribute some 250,000 free tickets, have already been swamped with requests.
Staff workers for congressman Donald Payne logged more than 2,000 ticket requests in three days, while others had so many calls, they had to stop taking requests.
The viewing area will stretch from the Capitol along the Mall. Some more distant parts will not require tickets and will probably be served by huge video screens.
Airline bookings have jumped - almost 200 per cent for one carrier.
Websites organising bus tours have been inundated; one organiser in Georgia saw deposits on inauguration trips shoot up from US$6,000 (S$9,000) to US$30,000 in 48hours.
And hotel rooms are selling out fast.
Mr William Hanbury, president of Destination DC, the District of Columbia's convention and tourism arm, says the area's 95,000 hotel rooms are filling up faster than for previous inaugurations. Marriott, for example, expects to sell out most of its Washington area hotels in about a week, he said.
Mr Hanbury expects the demand to be so great that there will be many 'innovative accommodations'.
'It is an extraordinarily historic event,' he said. 'The church group from Atlanta, the high school from Chicago - they're all trying to find places to stay. You're going to have people sleeping in church basements and high school cafeterias.'
Local residents are offering to rent rooms, apartments and even homes to those coming for the event.
On website Craigslist, a seven-bedroom estate in Fairfax Station, Virginia, billed as a 'lovely place to relax or host a celebrity reception', was offered for US$18,000 for the week.
It is, of course, too early to tell how many people will attend.
'I've heard numbers as high as 1.5 or 1.6 million,' Mr Hanbury said.
A Metro official pointed out that Inauguration Day and the day before, Martin Luther King Jr Day, are both federal holidays, complicating scheduling.
DC police plan to utilise an extra 1,000 out-of-town officers, beyond the 4,000 they usually borrow for the festivities. The military will have 5,000 service members on duty, including 1,800 along the parade route.
Mr Victor Parra, president and chief executive of the United Motorcoach Association, said he did not know how many buses would descend on Washington, but he is bracing himself for the biggest inauguration in history.
He could not recall a bigger event. 'It's like nothing I've seen before,' he said. The association represents 875 motorcoach companies in North America.
In North Carolina, several black leadership groups have plans to bring 1,800 people on 34 buses to the District the day before the inauguration.
It is the same story for airlines.
Delta Air Lines said last week that its inbound bookings for flights between Jan 16 and Jan 19 to the three DC area airports are up nearly 200 per cent.
Southwest Airlines reported a 100 per cent spike in bookings timed to the inauguration.
On Capitol Hill, switchboards buzzed non-stop last week with requests for tickets not yet available.
No one seemed to mind though.
Mr Kenneth Edmonds, chief of staff for Representative Jesse Jackson, whose father is one of the country's most prominent civil rights leaders, said: 'People are so excited about the prospect of witnessing history. They want to be able to tell their children they were here.'
