Cherry blossom festival brought visitors - but no noticable increase in tourism money

Even though the Cherry Blossom Festival drew record crowds this year, those crowds aren't spending as much money. This article thinks that it's mostly local people coming to the festival because it's cheap to get to and free to attend, which would explain why hotel occupancy is still down and they haven't seen a significant amount of income from the restaurant or souvenir industries. This reminds me of what Brandon was saying in class on Thursday about how people are coming for shorter amounts of time to pinch pennies. I think in some ways DC tourism has probably gone up (for example, I'm guessing there will be ridiculously record numbers of people applying for the White House Internship program this year) because everyone wants to be near Obama, but even that can't overcome financial shortfalls.