Despite rumours of a room supply shortage due to housing evacuees from Hurricane Katrina, the Orlando/Orange County Convention & Visitors Bureau, Inc has told ABTA that Central Florida area has an abundance of hotel rooms, vacation ownership rooms, homes and villas available. The Central Florida area traditionally serves as an evacuation site for coastal Florida residents during hurricanes due to its well established and strong hotel infrastructure. With the hurricane affected areas being more than 965 km away, at this time the Orlando area has less than 65 rooms occupied by evacuees out of a total of 113,000 hotel rooms. In addition, there are only 65 evacuees in the American Red Cross shelter in a neighboring county. Even if we do accept more evacuees, due to the inventory of rooms available, holidaymakers and conventions will not be displaced.

ABTA has also been told by the Travel Industry Association of America that while it`s not yet possible to travel to New Orleans and some parts of the Gulf Coast, the majority of the U.S. coast is unaffected and open for business. Whether you want to visit California, Florida, New York, Illinois, Washington, DC or any area in-between, visitors should not hesitate to travel around the U.S.

The Louisiana and New Orleans tourism authorities report that although most hotels in Louisiana are full right now, many displaced people are quickly making alternative arrangements and very shortly there will be vacancies. Visitors will soon be able to explore the attractions and intact culture of north Louisiana, Cajun Country, and Plantation Country without interruptions.