Kamala Harris fans want to book inauguration hotels. Good luck with that.

Marci Walton, 41, saw how the “vibes shifted” last month when President Biden announced he would not run for reelection and endorsed Vice President Harris.

“My group texts were going crazy. Friends were calling each other,” said Walton, a corporate trainer from Cleveland. “We were like, ‘We can win this.’”

Walton rode that surge of enthusiasm all the way to a booking at an Arlington hotel for the Jan. 20 inauguration — a potentially historic occasion that could see the first woman, the first Black woman and the first Asian American sworn in as president on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

“I just didn’t want to miss it if it goes our way,” she said. But while polls have her feeling good about Harris’s chances — and she is planning to volunteer to help those odds — Walton is being cautious. She almost booked a different hotel but looked at the fine print and changed course. “This has to be refundable,” she said of the nearly $1,900 total she ended up spending for four nights.

Energized Harris supporters like Walton suddenly are dreaming of a can’t-miss celebration in D.C. in five months — and hotel options closest to the action are limited, extremely expensive and, in many cases, nonrefundable. A Washington Post search found more than four dozen hotels that listed no availability online for the long holiday weekend of the inauguration; many that showed rooms for booking were charging $850 or more a night.

The limited hotel stock this far in advance has surprised some social media users in recent days, who have sounded an alarm about prices — or declared that the costs would have them watching the ceremony from home. Some announced that they had just booked their hotels.

Near the White House, the Willard InterContinental listed its cheapest rooms for MLK weekend at $2,851 a night. Rooms at the Marriott at Metro Center started at $1,344 a night, compared to the cheapest price of $242 a night the weekend before.

“What’s happening now is because there’s so much momentum tied to the potential of the first female president, first Black female president, there is a lot of interest from specific groups … wanting to be here to witness history,” said Elliott Ferguson, CEO of Destination DC.

Mass bookings, no matter who wins

Historic elections tend to draw bigger crowds, Ferguson said, and first-term inaugurations generate more interest than repeats. The last inauguration, for President Biden in 2021, was dramatically scaled back because of the pandemic and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Officials in D.C. urged Americans not to visit, while some hotels closed and Airbnb canceled all reservations.

Most years, the inauguration provides a much-needed January boost to the District’s hospitality businesses. Hotel occupancy often surpasses 90 percent, Ferguson said.

“We anticipate Washington, D.C. to be exceptionally busy during inauguration time,” the St. Gregory Hotel, near Dupont Circle, said in a statement. “Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve seen a notable increase in queries when it comes to Washington D.C. travel in January.”

Representatives for several properties said that hotels listing rooms as unavailable may not be fully sold out yet but instead holding back some inventory; in some cases, blocks of rooms will likely go to large groups. For individuals who hope to see their candidate’s big moment in person, scoring a centrally located place to stay could be a logistical or financial stretch.

Many travelers will come to town for the inauguration regardless of whether Harris or former president Donald Trump wins the election. Those crowds, which include representatives from foreign countries, already are filling up blocks of rooms at some high-end hotels, Ferguson said. Travel companies that negotiate rates and rooms with hotels often lock down such blocks.

The Sofitel at Lafayette Square said most hotels in the area were keeping inauguration inventory closed until the election was over, in part to focus on booking groups. The Four Seasons in Georgetown has “limited availability,” according to a statement, and “all requests will be handled internally.”

The Rosewood, also in Georgetown, closed reservations because it already has booked “substantial business,” according to a statement.

“However, we do try and make an effort to keep some availability for our repeat guests who will be inquiring for reservations closer to that time period,” the Rosewood said. “In this instance in particular, this high demand has been since April.”

D.C. hotels that showed no availability for the inauguration included the Waldorf Astoria, formerly the Trump International Hotel; the Fairmont; the Hay-Adams; the Grand Hyatt; and some lower-priced options, including Residence Inns, Courtyards by Marriott and Hyatt Place locations.

Tips for travelers

Those who want to stay close to the inauguration and other festivities should prepare to pay for the privilege — and gamble, if they book before the election. Besides commanding high rates, hotels are requiring minimum stays of three or four nights and mandating prepayment with no refunds available.

For people who are more budget-conscious and risk-averse, there are other options. Some social media users familiar with D.C. geography suggested that potential visitors can search for lodging in parts of the wider region that connect to D.C. by public transit, where availability should be better and prices lower.

Airbnb still has some reasonably priced listings in parts of D.C. and the surrounding area, though rentals closer to the action near the National Mall are listed for much higher, in some cases thousands of dollars a night. AirDNA, which tracks the performance of vacation rentals, said that about a third of the available nights in the greater D.C. area during the inauguration were already booked as of Monday.

Ferguson said the tourism office will showcase hotel packages on an inauguration page on its website for places to stay within the District and in the larger metropolitan area. According to Destination DC, there are more than 113,000 hotel rooms in the region, which stretches into parts of Maryland and Virginia.

Ferguson said there typically is a “frenzy” to book rooms in November, after a winner is declared.

But a wait-and-see approach won’t cut it for Gourjoine Wade, a university administrator from San Antonio. Wade, 44, called the 11-week turnaround between the election and inauguration a “tight timeline” to plan a trip — and he would know. He made plans closer to the event to attend the first Obama inauguration in 2009, driving from Arkansas and staying in Laurel, Md.

At the time, he and his wife had a baby who stayed with her grandparents. This time around, that daughter will be 16. Her younger sister is 11. If Harris wins, Wade wants them to see a fellow Black woman take the oath of office.

“Everybody was cold, everybody was happy; it was an experience like none other,” he said of the Obama inauguration. “I want my girls to experience that type of history, no matter what logistics look like.”

Wade posted about the hotel landscape on X last month, the same day he booked a refundable inauguration stay for his family in a Columbia, Md., hotel for less than $200 a night. Multiple people responded with their own plans or tips — or shock at the prices that, as one put it, “could feed a small nation.”

“I think that that speaks again to the energy and the enthusiasm that people have and the optimism about what could happen,” Wade said. “No matter what side of the political spectrum you fall on, you can’t shy away from the history and the implications of what could happen.”