Loss of tourism income complicates rebuilding

Officials say the industry accounted for the paychecks of 81,000 residents.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
Never before has it happened: a major American tourist area -- not just an attraction, but an entire destination -- out of business, all at once. The wreckage of New Orleans includes its very name, fallen from the list of big-time travel sites, where it has ranked near the top for decades.
This may seem inconsequential, given the human suffering that has marked the region for nearly two weeks after Hurricane Katrina laid to waste one of the nation's most stylish, graceful and saucy cities. In the long run, though, tourism -- or the question of what economic force will replace it -- will be among New Orleans' big worries.
Before the disaster, tourism accounted for the paychecks of 81,000 people in the region, New Orleans officials say. It is difficult to rebuild a city if its major source of income is not revived.
Monumental task
"We're getting inundated by convention planners, meeting planners, travel marketers, telling us that they love the city. 'Tell us when you're ready,' they're saying," said J. Stephen Perry, president and chief executive officer of the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau, who spoke by phone last week from the Baton Rouge office where he has temporarily relocated.
Perry was quick to say that the city has a monumental task before it -- and that it will be a different New Orleans after the power is restored, the streets are clean, the services and stores are operating, and the buildings are renewed.
In one of the nation's most popular convention towns, the bureau has canceled conventions through March.
Tourism facilities will be revamped early on, he said on the phone -- but not for tourism. Hotels, restaurants and some basic transportation need to be operating for people who are rebuilding the city.
Orleans Parish, which is the city of New Orleans, is one of five parishes that take in about three-quarters of Louisiana's tourist dollars -- money that has made tourism Louisiana's second-biggest industry, behind health care, according to state officials. Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu had said that the economic impact of travel on the state would hit the $10 billion mark this year, a projection that Katrina has wiped out.
New Orleans' major tourist areas are battered but not broken, Perry said. "If we'd lost the French Quarter, we really would lose New Orleans as a travel destination," he said. But "it was like a big hand came down and protected the Quarter, which has insignificant damage."
Travel and tourism operators know they may not be able to consider New Orleans as a destination for some time. Unlike the case of New York City after Sept. 11, 2001, visitors "can't even go to New Orleans as a show of support," said Arlene Blosch, who owns Travel Wizards, an agency in Bensalem.