Obama Tries to Boost Tourism to Gulf Coast With Weekend Trip

President Barack Obama and his family encouraged tourists to visit the Gulf Coast region with a weekend trip to Florida that included a porpoise sighting and a swim in coastal waters as the administration tried to boost the area’s economy in the aftermath of the BP Plc oil spill.

As BP moves closer to completing a relief well to permanently kill the damaged Macondo well, which had gushed an estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico before it was sealed last month, the Obama administration is shifting to the next phase of its response to the disaster: cleaning up the remaining oil, restoring parts of the coastline and bolstering an economy that largely relies on tourism.