Presidential inauguration tourism and hotel occupancy: Evidence from the Obama and Trump inaugurals

Abstract

This article examines the impact of the inaugurations of Barack Obama and Donald Trump on hotel occupancy in the Washington DC metro area. Using daily hotel data from 2010 to 2020 and controlling for multiple other major events along with day, week, and year fixed effects, we find substantial effects of presidential inaugurations on hotel occupancy. Daily occupancy rates around the inaugurations are four to six times higher than the next largest event in our sample. We also find evidence that inaugurations are multiple-day tourist events, with hotel occupancy rates seeing positive leads and lags. We find little difference in overall hotel occupancy impacts between the Obama and the Trump inaugurations, although the pattern differs due to the differences when in the week they occurred. Unfortunately, our results cannot separate the effect of the Women’s March on Washington from the Trump inauguration.