New Orleans: Two Years Later Tourism Remains City’s Beacon

Two years after Hurricane Katrina, reports abound of the continuing struggle in New Orleans to rebuild its infrastructure and social services. Many New Orleans residents remain away from their homes in other cities or in FEMA-provided trailers and visitor numbers are below half of pre-storm numbers. However, what has shown through as the city’s bright light is the business of tourism. Despite low visitor numbers, hotels, cruise ships and airlines companies in the business of tourism continue to invest and expand in New Orleans. Hilton, Marriott and Starwood have all made multi-million dollar investments in renovations and upgrades. Southwest, United, U.S. Airways and AirTran have all recently added flights into the city. And Carnival Corp. has signed on to bring a 2,000-passenger cruise ship to the city’s port at least through 2008. Even the business master himself, Donald Trump, is gearing up to open a self-named Trump Tower in 2009 in New Orleans featuring luxury condominiums, condo-hotels and retail shopping. These deep investments are causing the recovering city’s nay-sayers to take pause and ask, why would the tourism businesses invest in New Orleans if they did not see success in the future? With the two-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaching on August 29, I thought you would be interested in an interview with New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau CEO Stephen Perry to discuss: Tourism as the lifeblood of New Orleans economy as its number one industry, largest employer and critical driver of the rebuild Ever-increasing investment and confidence from the businesses driving the tourism business Long-term vision and visionary of New Orleans that promote the long-term investments New developments including a mixed-use luxury condo, hotel and shopping development from Donald Trump