Thursday, November 23, 2006

By Greg Thomas

There were plenty of reasons for the National Association of Realtors to reverse its promise, made just four months after Hurricane Katrina, to bring a huge convention to New Orleans about 10 months later.

National media exposure made New Orleans seem ill-equipped to handle its own residents, much less take care of about 25,000 visitors. Then, just two weeks before the convention came the shooting of five people in a French Quarter bar.

"So many of our people had reservations about coming down," said Lens Ferber, president of the Pennsylvania Realtors Association. But the association organized numerous trips for doubters like Ferber to prove that the city was ready. "Me going down (in August) helped break the ice," he said. "Many were apprehensive. The press outside your area is unbelievable" in painting a totally negative image of the city, Ferber said.

But the show went on, and delegates learned that the national media was dead wrong about New Orleans .

The National Association of Realtors' Nov. 10-13 convention in New Orleans -- the largest to come to the city since Hurricane Katrina -- not only came off without a hitch. It also was a huge success, hitting an attendance record and pumping $35 million to $40 million into the local economy.

But it didn't come easy.

It took some convincing, association President Thomas Stevens admitted, but if the group really is about building communities, meeting in New Orleans made sense over the group's fall-back meeting city, Anaheim , Calif.

For example, how to convince Ohio Realtors Association President Darlene Breen of Coldwell Banker Heritage Realtors in Dayton ? .

Breen and her members were concerned about safety. "Some of the people weren't going to go to New Orleans . 'It's not going to be ready for us. The water is going to be bad. There won't be enough facilities,' " Breen said, quoting the litany of concerns she heard.

"Five people shot in the French Quarter two weeks before we came down wasn't helping," she said.

That's when the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau cranked out news releases on its Web site and mailers to explain that incidents picked up by the national media were isolated events. It explained, for example, that the National Guard call-out was to patrol deserted areas of the city so local police could focus on populated areas.

'Seeing is believing'

And many Realtors, like Ferber, acted as "mystery shoppers," checking out service and staffing in hotels and restaurants. Realtors volunteered to help during the June convention of the American Library Association, to see how services were working during that 18,000-member gathering.

Breen credits Malcolm Young, chief executive officer of the Louisiana Realtor Association, with ensuring she came to the city and conducting several tours with other chapter presidents and officials to see conditions -- which also included tours of devastated Lakeview and 9th Ward.

Breen said she blew off swamp tours and other normal tourism events to volunteer for cleanup duties at City Park . She stayed an extra day and rented a cab to take two other state Realtor association presidents to see the devastation unnoticeable from the hotels and the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center .

"Seeing is believing," said Mary Beth Romig, director of communications and public relations for the Convention and Visitors Bureau.

She said final numbers show that 24,000 people attended the 2006 National Association of Realtors Meeting & Expo.

That's a 17 percent increase from attendance the last time the group was in town, 2002, and not that far off from its meeting in 2005 in one of the world's top tourism destinations -- San Francisco -- where attendance hit 27,000.

Airport concerns

Concerns about Louis Armstrong International Airport 's ability to handle the flow of the National Association of Realtors members were dealt with by spreading arrivals over a longer period through numerous volunteer efforts, from bringing people in early to help build homes with Rebuild New Orleans and Habitat for Humanity to staying later to help clean City Park .

The airport handled the capacity, with only Continental Airlines making serious adjustments -- adding about 12 percent capacity -- to accommodate attendees, said Aviation Board spokeswoman Michelle Duffourc and Continental officials.

Most delays that out-of-state attendees talked about were attributable to weather in Atlanta and the Northwest.

"The heaviest day was from what I was told was Monday," departure day, Duffourc said. The Transportation Security Administration "staffed up and opened early, which helped alleviate any initial backlog."

Sue Gourley, vice president of conventions for the National Association of Realtors, met with airport executives and airline representatives and provided them with geographic flight attendance data from the group's 2002 visit to New Orleans .

Lucien Salvant, a media specialist with the association's Washington , D.C. , staff, said staggering arrivals over nine days to assist in volunteer work helped.

As for Ferber, he's glad he made the trip, but said there were a few negatives. He said the airport was "dirty" and definitely "not ready for us." He said some of his friends sat in planes on the tarmac for 2 1/2 2 hours and that his flight was overbooked by five seats.

He said hotel staffing was a major concern during his August visit, but that he believes the industry scored high on that level.

But no one scored higher than the workers themselves.

"We just appreciate the hotel workers, staff of the restaurants. They were just courteous and very, very thankful" for the business, Ferber said. "You guys just need more help. It's the people down there that makes the place so special."

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Greg Thomas can be reached at gthomas@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3399.