L.A. Tourism Officials Fight Uphill Battle

Talk about a tough sell.

Los Angeles tourism officials journeyed to the City by the Bay on Tuesday in an effort to persuade 4,700 travel industry representatives attending a key convention that all is well in post-riot Los Angeles.

Tour organizers and travel industry journalists listened politely as the head of the Los Angeles Convention & Visitors Bureau pronounced Los Angeles safe to visit and on a path toward healing itself after the April riots in which images of burning buildings, beatings and looting were seen around the world.

“We as a community have taken a significant punch,” said George D. Kirkland, president and chief executive of the convention bureau, “but our strength as a community allows us to absorb that punch.”

Domestic travel to Los Angeles has “substantially returned to normal,” Kirkland said, but he noted that luring back some overseas travelers will be a challenge.

“There’s going to be work required in the Korean market,” he said. “And the big concern is probably in the Japanese market,” the region’s No. 1 overseas market. Travel business from Japan has fallen off largely because of tour organizers’ concern about visitor safety. Kirkland said the bureau is considering establishing a tourism office in Japan.

Kirkland showed off a glossy brochure and a video with testimonials from an ethnically diverse array of Los Angeles residents, part of a $500,000 marketing effort to restore Los Angeles’ luster as a top travel destination.

He also expressed concern about a study conducted for the bureau by Economic Research Associates, an economic consulting firm, which projects that Los Angeles County stands to lose $1.1 billion in visitor spending and as many as 31,000 hotel, restaurant and other tourism-dependent jobs in the riots’ aftermath.

Shelby Allen, the bureau’s vice president of marketing, acknowledged that there is potential for further outbreaks of violence because of the upcoming retrial of Laurence M. Powell, one of the officers accused of beating Rodney King, and the trials of several suspects accused of beating truck driver Reginald Denny.

Kirkland said Los Angeles must do a better job of promoting its diversity, something he sees as a key drawing card. “Everybody knows we have fabulous hotels and attractions,” he said. “We have fabulous people too.”