REPORT – ITB 2006, BERLIN: Since hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the New Orleans Convention & Visitors Bureau with the government and business leaders have vowed to put New Orleans back on the tourism map. In fact, historic structures around the…
REPORT – ITB 2006, BERLIN: Since hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the New Orleans Convention & Visitors Bureau with the government and business leaders have vowed to put New Orleans back on the tourism map. In fact, historic structures around the French Quarter and tourist areas like the CBD, Warehouse and Arts District, Garden District and Algiers have remained dry and suffered the lightest damage.
Most of the city’s historic homes and buildings remain intact. Six months after Katrina, New Orleans old town and the main tourist districts celebrated the 150th anniversary of Mardi Gras and provided an ideal opportunity to take stock of the situation. New Orleans’s city centre has steadily recovered with over 80% of all hotel rooms open again (approximately 25,000) as well as all major museums and some 80 restaurants. The latest re-opening was the New Orleans Museum of Art on 3 March, with a grand tribute to the arts called ‘The HeART of New Orleans’.
For the time being, the New Orleans Museum of Art and the adjacent Besthoff Sculpture Garden are open Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Shopping centres are again opened like Riverwalk Marketplace, Canal Place or Clearview. Jazz clubs and bars in the famed Bourbon Street are also back in business. The New Orleans CVB has produced a new post-Katrina promotional video designed to assist travel professionals and meeting planners with selling their leisure groups and meetings to New Orleans under the slogan ‘business as usual’.
Most of the US carriers have already resumed their operations at New Orleans airport. In 2003, according to the latest available figures from the NOCVB, total visitors reached 10.1 million, generating an expenditure of US$4.9 billion. According to J Stephen Perry, President of the NOCVB, the city lost US$3.5 billion in revenues from meetings held somewhere else between August and the end of 2005.
Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.
