Realtors group to see refurbished center

Thursday, October 12, 2006

By Scott Sternberg

With New Orleans ' image as a tourist destination still reeling from Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters, former Presidents Clinton and Bush are coming to town again to help shake off the rust.

Well-known for their millions of dollars in fund-raising efforts after the storm, the former presidents plan to tag-team a keynote speech to the National Association of Realtors during the group's annual convention Nov. 10-13.

The convention, hosted at the renovated Ernest N. Morial Convention Center , is expected to bring 30,000 visitors to the New Orleans area, filling up hotels, taxis and no doubt seats at local restaurants.

It will be one of the largest tests of New Orleans ' tourism industry since Katrina and an important boost to an industry that has struggled since the storm. The large gathering also will come at a time of year when the city's tourism calendar typically picks up.

"The pace picks back up again in October and November," said J. Stephen Perry, president and CEO of the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau. Hot weather often makes summer and September difficult times to attract gatherings.

Perry said the Realtors Association's meeting will build on the success of the American Library Association's 18,000-person convention in June, which received a thumbs up from attendees and observers who considered it a major test of New Orleans ' viability as a convention destination.

"It will be the final piece of the puzzle for 2006, illustrating to the national convention and meeting professionals that we are open for business," Perry said. "The American Library Association opened the door, and now the NAR will kick the door open."

The meeting never considered not coming to New Orleans after Katrina, said the association's managing director of public affairs, Lucien Salvant, a New Orleans native.

"Realtors build communities," Salvant said. "We have a vested interest in New Orleans . The officers of the association met several times with officials in New Orleans to see if New Orleans was ready for this. New Orleans has been good to us in the past, and we've always had good conventions there. We owe these people something."

Salvant said that as of September, registration for this year's convention was up 38 percent from the last time the convention came to New Orleans in 2002, and up 10 percent from last year's conference in San Francisco .

The Realtors will "fill every hotel room and every restaurant" in town, Perry said, and Salvant said the Realtors will also perform community service and that the national association is raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for Habitat for Humanity throughout the region.

Center's new look   

The Convention Center's communications director, Sabrina Written, said the facility has been upgraded and the visual elements, from ceilings to color schemes and carpet, have been changed.

"We thought it was important that when people came to this building, it was not the same building they saw on the news," Written said.

Written said the game of public relations changed for New Orleans after Katrina. People used to think of good music and food, she said, but now they think about flooding and destruction.

Written said so-called "show-and-tell" visits have been the most effective marketing for the Convention Center.

"It's been important for us to show that the city is intact," Written said. "The booking pace has picked up to what we were pre-Katrina."

Written said the large conferences set for October and November, including the Realtors Association, American Society for Reproductive Medicine and Society of Exploration Geophysicists, have put October and November of 2006 on par with their counterparts in 2004, with almost 90,000 visitors coming for events held in the Convention Center during those two months.

But large conferences like the Realtor's Association aren't the only way New Orleans ' tourism business will find success post-Katrina. Large conventions usually book years in advance.

"The city is now having to switch marketing strategies to more short-term business, focus on smaller corporate meetings," Perry said. "We've always done smaller corporate meetings, but we were limited that the (larger conventions) took so many of the rooms in the city."

Indeed, smaller conventions and conferences might be the area's best hope for the short term.

The May 2007 conference Phoenix Rising, a gathering based around the "Harry Potter" novels that is expected to draw more than 1,000 people to the Sheraton New Orleans, plans to hold academic seminars, movie showings and even a game of "Quidditch," a game played by characters in J.K. Rowling's famed novels, for its more than 1,000 mostly adult attendees, all around the French Quarter.

'Perception-driven'

Perry said the largest problem facing the city is an image portrayed by the national news media that the whole city looks like the hardest-hit areas.

"The fact that every time (NBC news anchor) Brian Williams comes to town he broadcasts from the 9th Ward instead of in front of Emeril's sets us back, because the tourism business is an image and perception-driven business," Perry said. "When you choose a location, you're choosing the experience."

Perry said three events, all successful, have helped New Orleans through this "natural period of doubt": Mardi Gras, the Jazz and Heritage Festival and the American Library Association's meeting. He is optimistic about the future as well.

"Over a three-year period, tourism is going to come out better than it ever has," Perry said. "It's going to have refurbished infrastructure and better selling."

But Dickie Brennan, a local restaurateur who is also involved with the Louisiana Restaurant Association and several other community and business groups, said the biggest challenge facing the tourism industry is finding workers for hotels, restaurants and the like.

Although Brennan's restaurants have been able to bring back much of their pre-Katrina work force internally, he said other businesses have not been as fortunate and that housing for workers should be a priority.

"More people need to be in a position where they can build the neighborhoods back," Brennan said. "As a business community, we're going to have to just focus on housing because we're going to need workers."

Brennan said the best decision he made was opening his restaurants as fast as possible, offering some of those who wanted to come back a place to work.

But Brennan said he hopes federal grant programs and insurance money will start rolling in, letting people return and staff businesses focused around the tourism industry.

"We're going to be short-staffed, but one thing about conventions is we know they're coming. It's just like Mardi Gras, we geared up and took care of the people," Brennan said. "We're only going to be better as time goes. We've crossed that line that we're capable of doing meetings. It's the most important industry to our recovery because it puts so much dollars into our market."

Ripple effect

Mark Wilson, president of the French Quarter Business Association, said the businesses he represents will have to switch gears quickly in October, when he said the city will go from running at 45 percent capacity to 80 percent for convention time.

The timing is important particularly because of the Realtors, Wilson said, who are a "high-end group" that is "entrepreneurial" in nature.

"How that Convention Center performs has a dramatic effect on how the merchants in the French Quarter do," Wilson said. "When the Convention Center is busy, the French Quarter is busy."

In January, the city will host the "convention of corporate convention planners," Perry said, giving the Crescent City its opportunity to show convention planners it has the infrastructure to host meetings and conventions of the future.

"We're bringing them here to really see, touch and feel the city," Perry said. "They need to have the confidence to their corporations that their meetings come here."

With several other conferences coming in this year pulling large numbers of attendees from 2,000 to 6,500 per conference, Perry said 2006 will close on a good note, leading into the "great start" of 2007, when several big-budget meetings will be coming, including the American College of Cardiology with its more than 28,000 attendees.

Wilson said although the first summer of tourism after Katrina has been bad, merchants that can hold on through October and November will have much to hope for.

"There's light at the end of the tunnel," Wilson said. "It's just that the tunnel is a lot longer and a lot darker."