New Orleans tourists head elsewhere, long to return

Karen Wall had planned to celebrate her birthday in New Orleans later this month. Instead, she and her husband are heading to Orlando. There they'll dine at Emeril's Orlando — owned by celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse, who has three restaurants in New Orleans — "as a small concession to having to miss all of the wonderful dining in New Orleans."

Wall, of Tustin, Calif., is among tens of thousands of travelers whose plans to visit New Orleans were disrupted by Hurricane Katrina. Tourism officials are asking leisure travelers to wait until the end of the year before returning, and those forced to find alternative destinations range from brides planning dream weddings to conventions of 20,000 people.

Some, like Wall, will settle for a little piece of the New Orleans experience elsewhere, whether it's dining on Cajun food far from Louisiana, or listening to music on Beale Street in Memphis instead of Bourbon Street.

"Vegas is going to pick up, too," predicted Roger Dow, president of the Travel Industry Association of America. "If you want to party, everything's there — restaurants, gaming."

Those looking for Southern charm and historic homes will head to places like Charleston, S.C., where the visitors center recorded 4,000 more walk-ins this September than last. "It appears we do have visitors who would have gone to New Orleans," said Frank Fredericks of the Charleston Area Convention and Visitors Bureau.

New Orleans' Morial Convention Center — which was trashed by evacuees who found refuge there from their flooded neighborhoods — is closed for renovations until March 31. But only a few cities in the country — Chicago, Atlanta, Orlando and Las Vegas — have comparable facilities of more than 1 million square feet of exhibit space. So those cities are getting large trade shows and meetings that had been planned for New Orleans.

The National Business Aviation Association moved its meeting, with 35,000 expected attendees and a potential $40 million economic impact, to Orlando. The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons relocated its annual meeting of 28,000 delegates to Chicago, bringing with it an estimated economic impact of $52 million.

Altogether, New Orleans will lose $3.5 billion in revenue from meetings that are held elsewhere, according to J. Stephen Perry, president of the New Orleans Convention & Visitors Bureau.