Group Banks on Tourists No Longer Loving L.A. : Travel: A new convention and visitors bureau plans to promote the Valley as a safer alternative, but denies that it’s capitalizing on the riots.

While the Los Angeles tourist industry struggles with riot damage to the city’s image, San Fernando Valley business leaders plan to market the often-overlooked suburb to travelers and convention planners as a “safe, friendly environment . . . separate from Los Angeles.”

A new group, the San Fernando Valley Convention and Visitors Bureau, is being organized by Valley hotel operators and MCA Inc., who contend the Valley is not getting its fair share of the region’s tourist dollars.

Heading the nonprofit group is Christine Hanson, vice president for corporate communications at MCA, the media conglomerate that runs the Universal Studios tour and is building an ambitious new entertainment and shopping complex on its Universal City property.

The bureau will initially support itself with annual dues from member companies, ranging from $150 to $1,000.

But it hopes to eventually obtain city tax subsidies similar to the long-established Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau, which gets about half its annual $9.5-million budget from the city.

In radio spots and print ads in several local chamber of commerce publications, the Valley bureau said it plans “to capture our rightful share of the business that’s now going to the ‘other side of the hill.’ ”

“It’s very hard for the L.A. bureau to take care of us in the Valley,” said Arlene Davidson, the bureau’s marketing committee chairwoman. The only Valley attraction publicized by the Los Angeles bureau has been Universal Studios, she said.

“More than 9 million people visit the studio a year, but most don’t sleep in Valley hotels,” said Davidson, whose Universal City-based advertising firm, Davidson Gelb, represents the 464-room Universal City Hilton and the 388-room Warner Center Hilton.

The bureau plans a multifaceted marketing campaign to attract conventions, meetings and tourists to the Valley. It will include advertising Valley attractions in major national travel and meeting trade magazines, according to the group’s marketing document.

Promotional merchandise, such as T-shirts, postcards and buttons, also are part of the bureau’s marketing plan, along with discounted package tours pitching Valley accommodations, restaurants and recreational facilities.

“We’re going to be focusing on the Valley’s suburban location,” Hanson said in an interview Wednesday. “We’re not in a downtown, hustle-and-bustle location. . . . What we’re trying to point out is that there are all these little pockets of experiences around Los Angeles.”

The group’s marketing document goes further. The bureau, it states, will be “concentrating on creating a broad awareness of the San Fernando Valley as an entity separate from Los Angeles.”

While acknowledging that the riots have reduced tourism, the marketing document proposed that the Valley bureau “get the word out that we can provide a safe, friendly environment” for travelers.

But Hanson and Valley-based publisher Wayne Adelstein, also a member of the bureau’s executive board, denied that their group will try to exploit the riots to attract travelers to the Valley who may fear going to the rest of Los Angeles.

“We’re not trying to take advantage or capitalize on the riots,” said Adelstein, publisher of Valley Business Magazine. “The idea of a bureau was being discussed before the riots occurred.”

“We’re not trying to do anything at the expense of Los Angeles,” Hanson added.

Hanson was also adamant that the Valley bureau will not be competing with the grander marketing plans of the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau, which is now trying to set up satellite offices in New York, Tokyo and Chicago to assist in its global marketing campaign.

The mandate of the Los Angeles bureau will be to sell the entire region and shape its image in the national and international travel marketplace, Hanson said. That done, the Valley bureau will compete with other areas of the Los Angeles region for the dollars of tourists who come to the area.

Several Southern California communities have their own convention and visitors bureaus, including Long Beach, Pasadena and Santa Monica in Los Angeles County alone. These agencies have annual budgets of $3.6 million, $1.1 million and $750,000, respectively.

Michael Collins, vice president of the Los Angeles bureau, said that although he was unfamiliar with the details of the Valley bureau’s plans, the project had his organization’s blessing.

Its advent is especially welcome at a time when Southern California’s tourist and convention business has been badly injured by a recession and the riots, Collins said.

The Valley group already has 40 to 50 founding members and the endorsement of the United Chambers of Commerce of the San Fernando Valley and the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn.

On Sept. 22, the bureau will hold a conference at the Universal City Hilton to show prospective members what it plans to do for the Valley. Featured at this event will be a 10-minute videotape of Valley attractions and accommodations, narrated by entertainer Steve Allen, a Sherman Oaks resident.

Members will benefit from belonging to the bureau because their businesses will be publicized in the organization’s campaigns, the marketing document says.