Tourism In Tatters

TAMPA - Tourist destinations and convention sites in Florida could gain some of the millions of dollars in business that the Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama tourism industries are losing each day, experts say. One estimate by The Travel Industry Association says the tourism industry along the battered Gulf is losing as much as $50 million a day as the result of wiped out casinos, closed hotels and restaurants and shuttered convention sites.

It is too early to determine whether tourists are heading for hotspots in the Bay area or elsewhere in Florida instead of popular destinations such as Biloxi, Miss., or New Orleans, but convention groups booked along the Gulf before Hurricane Katrina are beginning to look to Florida to rebook their events.

The New Orleans Convention Center, for example, is closed until at least March 31, and hotels in the ruined city are closed indefinitely. That leaves some convention groups looking for alternatives.

Karen Brand, a spokeswoman for the Tampa Bay Convention & Visitors Bureau, said 12 such groups have approached Tampa about scheduling events. Brand said the groups range from small organizations looking to meet in a hotel to groups with several thousand members inquiring about the Tampa Convention Center.

Brand said Tampa might not be able to accommodate many of the larger groups that had booked into New Orleans. The reason: The convention center in New Orleans is one of the largest in the nation, with 1.1 million square feet. Tampa's is 600,000 square feet.

That puts Orlando, Chicago, Atlanta and Las Vegas -- cities with some of the largest convention centers in the nation -- in the running to get the New Orleans business.

Erika Yowell, a publicist for the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority, said 45 groups have approached Las Vegas about relocating meetings. Officials from the Orange County/Orlando Convention & Visitors Bureau Inc. did not have specifics. Danielle Courteney, a spokeswoman for the bureau, said the National Business Aviation Association has rescheduled November's convention to Orlando. The group, which had been booked for New Orleans, will bring 35,000 visitors to the city, she said.

Florida tourism officials say they want to be sensitive to the disaster on the Gulf Coast and don't want to poach business. Instead they are waiting for tourists and convention groups to approach them about rescheduling trips and events originally slated for the central Gulf Coast.

Thom Stork, president of Visit Florida, the state's tourism marketing agency, said the organization doesn't plan any special marketing efforts to attract tourists who would have been headed for the central Gulf Coast. "We don't want to be insensitive," he said.

Jim Caldwell, vice president of sales and marketing at D.K. Shifflet & Associates Ltd., a travel data analysis firm, said tourists who typically visited Mississippi beach areas might look for Florida beaches as an alternative.