Tourists From Outer Space Not Alien Concept to Some

Los Angeles businessmen who are looking to travelers from France, Japan and Australia to help end a slump in summer vacation business have been advised to raise their sights by a few hundred billion miles.

The ultimate foreign tourists--space aliens--are ready to drop in for a visit. All they need is an invitation.

At least that is what 450 business executives were told as they gathered at the Biltmore for a lecture that was greeted with a mixture of awe, humor and some understandable skepticism. To be sure, this was no ordinary business meeting.

Spacemen from the planet Erra in the constellation Pleiades are already visiting earth with regularity, the business leaders learned. Until now, the Pleiadians have apparently spurned Los Angeles with what travel agents call “overflights”--passing overhead without stopping.

The space aliens are skipping over to Switzerland to land, said Michael Horn, a 46-year-old Marina del Rey company vice president and UFO enthusiast who delivered the unusual visitor report.

Horn screened films and photographs taken by a Swiss farmer named Eduard Billy Meier that supposedly showed 25-foot-wide spaceships floating over Alpine mountain pastures.

Despite the 500 light-year distance between Los Angeles and Erra, the Pleiadians are a mere seven-hour flight away, said Horn. “There’s a good chance they may be hovering to take a peek at us right now,” he added.

Meier has described Pleiadians as humanoids with a blond, Nordic look that is accented by long earlobes. A few eyebrows went up as Horn screened a blurry photo of a purported Pleiadian woman who resembled Britt Ekland with big ears.

Hotel waiter Abel Cervantes came the closest to matching the Pleiadian description during Wednesday night’s flying saucer discussion. He hovered with a tray of hors d’oeuvres and sported a pair of plastic Dr. Spock ears from a Hollywood costume shop.

Nearly everyone else seemed to be playing it straight, however.

Hotel executives staged the lecture as the centerpiece of a cocktail party for their best clients. They mailed printed invitations that included one of Meier’s flying saucer photos beneath a quotation from the late author Louis L’Amour: “We cannot discover new oceans until we have the courage to lose sight of the shore.”

Many guests claimed to have an open attitude about space aliens. “I believe they could be,” said printing salesman Stafford Lindsay. Said petroleum company executive Grant Ivy: “I hope they exist. There’s got to be some hope for our society.”

Lana Ashford, a Biltmore administrator, had urged guests to come “just for the fun of it” but “with an open mind.” She said recent news reports of mysterious, alleged spaceship landings in England triggered interest.

Some who sat through the hourlong talk suggested that the Pleiadians will need open minds if they visit Los Angeles.

“If they landed on the weekend, they’d encounter the usual 12 gang killings,” said stockbroker Jay Eagan. “They’d find a lot of negative feelings here. Maybe that’s why they land in Switzerland.”

Law firm recruiter Bege Burdette predicted that arriving spacemen would all but be ignored by Los Angeles residents who are already accustomed to weirdness on their streets.

“It would depend on how they looked and dressed,” agreed her friend, insurance investigator Dee Dugan. People loved them in “Cocoon,” “The Abyss” and “E.T.”

Hotel officials said about half of the staff of the Los Angeles Convention & Visitors Bureau attended the lecture. Bureau Vice President Michael Collins, who said he missed the lecture, joked afterward that his office won’t turn away any visitors who can help compensate for a soft domestic-traveler market.

“I have no reticency about reaching out and welcoming space aliens,” Collins said.

“Technology aside, I’d be most interested in their currency. If there’s an established exchange rate, I’d be the first to welcome them.”