Earthquakes May Deal a New Blow to Tourism : Hospitality: The riots have already taken a toll. Mayor Bradley assures the world that Los Angeles is safe.

Sunday’s violent earthquakes are likely to scare away some tourists from Southern California this summer, undoing efforts by city officials to jump-start the region’s riot- and recession-damaged economy by touting the area’s reputation as a vacation Mecca.

“This is just more bad news, just one more thing that hurts, just one more reason the region’s tourism is going to remain depressed,” said Bruce Baltin, director of PKF Consulting in Los Angeles, who earlier predicted that the riots that followed the Rodney King trial verdict would cut tourism by 12% to 15% during the next year.

Baltin estimated that the earthquakes Sunday could result in an additional 2% drop in Southland tourism, normally an $8-billion-a-year industry that is Southern California’s second-largest employer and its third-largest source of revenue.

For city officials, images of the earthquake damage on television were especially disturbing, coming just two months into their efforts to undo the public relations harm of the riots and portray Southern California as a safe and friendly place to visit.

The quakes were also expected to undo some of the positive effects the region had hoped to gain from the just-concluded round of airline price wars. With coast-to-coast fares discounted up to 50%, Los Angeles stood to enjoy an unexpected lift in tourism, said Lynn Reaser, chief economist at First Interstate Bank in Los Angeles.

“It was going to be a bad summer anyway because of the economy and riots, but the airline ticket discounts were going to help a little,” Reaser said. “Now the summer will really get off to a slow start.”

Even before the riots, the Southland’s tourism industry had been hurt by the prolonged national recession. Over the last year, dozens of restaurants and a few hotels have gone out of business. Theme parks, such as Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm in Orange County, lowered their admission prices to attract visitors.

At a press conference in City Hall Sunday afternoon, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley tried to counteract any negative effects of the earthquakes.

“Let me make it very clear for the national audience,” Bradley said, “this earthquake was not in Los Angeles. It was clear out in Palm Springs. We don’t want people to confuse that issue.

“We had literally no damage to our city and very limited damage aside from power lines that went down. This city is safe; it’s operating,” he added.

Despite the mayor’s assurances, some Southland hotels reported a scattering of earthquake-related reservation cancellations and early check-outs--and a surge of calls from nervous reservation holders.

“I’m telling people to watch the television news and make their own decision about coming,” said J. L. Robertson, front desk manager at the Universal Hilton and Towers in Universal City.

At the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, shaken attendees at the annual convention of the human-rights group Amnesty International shrugged off assurances of safety from the hotel and moved their Sunday sessions outside--across the street to Pershing Square, a city park often populated by homeless persons.

Local amusement parks reported lower-than-usual attendance figures Sunday, reflecting in large part advisories from state disaster officials that residents stay home and off the roads. Predictions for when normal crowds might return varied from park to park.

At Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia, attendance was off nearly 50%, a spokeswoman said. She added that the park, which features popular roller coaster-type rides, draws more than 75% of its attendance from within the region. Scott Swan, a spokesman at Disneyland in Anaheim, said Sunday’s attendance would probably be lower than usual but not dramatically so. At least 50% of the visitors to the Magic Kingdom, he noted, come from outside the area and were already here when the quake hit.

Swan conceded, however, that it would be difficult for Disneyland to distance itself from the quakes--as it made an effort to do with the Los Angeles riots two months ago.

“After the riots, we were putting out the message that those things happened in Los Angeles and that we are in Orange County, and Orange County is safe,” Swan said. “But with the earthquakes, it’s harder to separate ourselves from the rest of the region. There’s not much we can do about Mother Nature.”

In general, economists and tourism officials said, the farther away a potential visitor lives from Los Angeles, the more likely he is to be frightened by images of the quake damage and stories about prospects of another major temblor.

“If people haven’t already made their reservations to come here, they may think twice,” said Stuart Zanville, a spokesman for Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park. “There could be some additional downturn in international visitors because of this.”

However, Zanville and other industry officials discounted the possibility of widespread reservation cancellations--unless there is another sizable quake in coming days.

And they noted that California and local residents, who comprise anywhere from 50% to 75% of the visitors to the region’s attractions, are more likely to stick to their vacation plans because they understand the area’s geography and know how much distance there is between the earthquakes’ epicenters in Joshua Tree and Big Bear and the major tourist attractions in Universal City, Anaheim, San Diego and Buena Park.

Times staff writer George Ramos contributed to this report.

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