Is it the wet weather? The highly publicized drug wars? A lack of
”knockout” exhibitions at the Smithsonian Institution?
Those are some of the easy theories. The hard fact is that statistics show a sharp decline in the number of visitors to some of Washington`s main tourist attractions.
The number of visitors to the Lincoln Memorial, according to the National Park Service, was down a whopping 59 percent for the first four months of the year, while the Jefferson Memorial showed a decline of 39 percent and attendance at the various Smithsonian museums on the Mall was down, through May, by 14 percent compared with a similar period last year.
What appears to be hard fact is something of a mystery.
What, for example, would account for 561,000 fewer people visiting the Lincoln Memorial even as hotel occupancy rates, according to the Washington Convention and Visitors Association, showed gains of 3 to 5 percent this year? The Park Service says it is not sure, but it suspects that it may soon be able to explain things.
Last July, seeking to get a better tally of the people who seriously visit the memorials-as opposed to those who may only, for example, play tag on the steps-the Park Service changed its place and method of counting.
At the Lincoln Memorial, this means that six times a day a 15-minute count is made of people entering the memorial.
Before last July, said Sandra A. Alley, chief regional spokesman for the Park Service, ”we counted everybody in sight.”
Perhaps a more accurate gauge of the 1989 tourist season is the 8 percent decline in visitors to the Washington Monument, where, because of its elevators, the year-to-year comparisons are considered more reliable.-
