Torrance Is Billing Itself as a Safe Bet for Tourists : Marketing: Worried that foreign visitors are avoiding post-riot Los Angeles, officials have earmarked about $50,000 to promote the South Bay city, particularly in Pacific Rim countries.

With foreign visitors apparently staying away from post-riot Los Angeles in droves, at least one South Bay community has come up with a novel approach to lure potentially fearful tourists to its hotels and shopping malls.

The slogan for the effort could go like this: “Torrance! It’s nowhere near L.A.!”

That is not, of course, the city of Torrance’s actual marketing slogan. (The city’s actual slogans are “Destination Torrance,” and “Torrance: Halfway to Everywhere!”) But the mock slogan does sum up the message being sent by some Torrance tourism officials.

If Los Angeles’ tourism and convention business founders, some Torrance officials are taking steps to make sure their city doesn’t go down with the ship. So the city is making a concerted effort to distance itself, psychologically speaking, from the rest of the L.A. megalopolis.

One Torrance tourism booster, who declined to be quoted by name, said Torrance is in effect “trying to capitalize on the riots” by portraying itself as an island of safety and calm in a very dangerous urban sea.

“Since the (riots), if you say you’re from L.A., people say, ‘Oh, did your house burn down?’ ” said Ted Porter, a Torrance Area Chamber of Commerce vice president who is active in tourism promotion. “That’s the perception people have of L.A. in many countries.

“So maybe people are saying, what are our other options? If they’re coming to Southern California, we want them to think Torrance,” Porter said.

To get tourists and convention and business meeting planners to “think Torrance,” the city and chamber are earmarking about $50,000 for an aggressive outreach program, including newspaper advertising, to plant the name Torrance in as many minds as possible, particularly in Pacific Rim countries.

Although that is a pittance compared to the $500,000 that Los Angeles tourism officials are spending to try to repair the city’s riot-torn image, Porter and others hope it will have a significant impact--especially on worried Pacific Rim tourists and business people who imagine riots, looting and burning buildings when they think of Los Angeles.

Almost everyone agrees that safety is a major tourist concern. In fact, a Torrance tourism official who attended a recent convention of about 5,000 travel industry representatives in San Francisco reported that the No. 1 question people had about Torrance was, “Is it safe there?”

The answer, said Porter, is that according to FBI crime statistics, “Torrance is one of the safest cities in America” for its size--about 140,000 population. The safety angle is repeatedly stressed by tourism officials in interviews and in promotional information about the city.

However, Porter denies that Torrance is trying to benefit from the riots that swept many parts of Los Angeles but left Torrance unscathed.

“Oh no,” said Porter. “We don’t want to say that somebody else has problems, and we want to take advantage of it. You take advantage by promoting your own strengths.”

Los Angeles and South Bay tourism officials acknowledge that, although firm figures aren’t available, the number of foreign tourists, especially those from Pacific Rim countries such as Japan, has declined. But whether Torrance can succeed in distancing itself from the rest of post-riot Los Angeles is a matter of some debate.

“At this stage of the game, Los Angeles is not pulling in as many Japanese visitors as it should,” said Michael Collins, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau. “And that’s the single most important market to Los Angeles.”

Collins added, however, that although “each community has its own view on how it wants to distinguish itself,” for one community to try to too aggressively separate itself from its bigger neighbor could be a mistake.

“To Balkanize it . . . is not a good business approach,” Collins said.

Dick Nichols, general manager of the Sheraton-Los Angeles Harbor Hotel in San Pedro and chairman of the area chamber of commerce’s tourism council, said that although corporate and local business is still good in the San Pedro area, international tourism is suffering.

“We’re not seeing the Pacific Rim and European business we’d normally be seeing this time of year,” Nichols said, with Japanese tourism in particular being way down. “It’s only about a quarter of what it should, compared to last year.”

However, Nichols said it’s difficult to pinpoint a reason for the decline. Perhaps it’s because of the riots and the fear of crime, he said, or perhaps it’s because of the global economy--or perhaps it’s a combination of factors.

Even some Torrance tourism business people aren’t sure how much of an impact a “Torrance-is-not-riot-torn-L.A.” approach will have on international business.

“We do try to sell ourselves as an alternative (to L.A. proper),” said Susan Chung, director of marketing for the Torrance Marriott Hotel, the city’s largest. “That’s always been the case, but especially since the event”--that is, the riots.

Chung added, however, that although there was “some shifting (of tourism and convention business) from downtown to the outer areas” in the immediate aftermath of the riots, she said “that has now subsided.”

In fact, Chung said that during a recent trip to Japan, “their major concern was the earthquakes. They didn’t ask about the riots very often.”

Tamiko Nakamoto, a senior supervisor at the Los Angeles branch of the Japan Travel Bureau, said that the biggest problem Torrance would have in pitching itself to international tourists as a safe alternative to Los Angeles is that few people in the world have heard of Torrance.

“If you say ‘Torrance’ (in Japan), people don’t know where that is,” Nakamoto said. Besides, she said, to Japanese travelers, “anything in Southern California is considered L.A.”

Torrance officials acknowledge that it’s not going to be easy for a small city like Torrance to distinguish itself from Los Angeles in the hearts and minds of tourists.

“The problem with Torrance is, ‘Where’s Torrance?’ ” Porter said.

Still, he said, by taking a proactive approach and selectively targeting its appeal, Torrance hopes to lure tourists, conventioneers and business travelers who might feel safer with “Destination Torrance” than with “Destination L.A.”

“We’re just trying to get Torrance on the map,” Porter said.

And that map would, ideally, contain no mention of that dangerous place known as “L.A.”