Another PR Nightmare for O.C.’s Tourist Trade : Travel: Officials will try to reassure Japanese in wake of slayings. Strategy may involve a distancing from L.A.

Having endured the effects of riots and earthquakes, Orange County tourist officials say they are frustrated by the battering their $4.8-billion industry has taken following problems in Los Angeles County.

Now, with the latest setback--the vicious slayings of two Japanese students in the Los Angeles seaside community of San Pedro--local tourism executives say they need to take immediate steps to reassure Japanese tourists as well as forge a long-term, countywide tourism strategy--possibly one that is more independent of Los Angeles.

“We have to emphasize how safe Orange County is, and we have the figures to back it up,” said Diane Baker, president of the Huntington Beach Conference and Visitors Bureau.

Though San Pedro is a dozen miles away from the Orange County border, the killing has tarred all of Southern California, experts say.

“The farther you get from anyplace, the more the geography gets clouded,” said Bruce Baltin, who heads hotel services for PKF Consulting in Los Angeles. The county could try to sever the connection with Los Angeles in tourists’ minds, he said, but “it just takes lots of marketing dollars.”

These issues are sure to be at the forefront at an upcoming countywide tourism summit being organized by Supervisors Gaddi H. Vasquez and William G. Steiner. “In Orange County, we have created a safer atmosphere for tourists as well as business, and we need to find an effective way to carry that message,” Vasquez said.

While long-term strategy is important, local business owners say the immediate concern is the Japanese market. With the world recoiling at the news of the killings, they fear that tourism may take yet another drop.

Yet, Orange County may be better prepared this time, since it has been gradually trying to move out of its larger neighbor’s shadow--particularly with the Japanese.

Since the Los Angeles riots in 1992, more Japanese tourists have been asking to stay nights in Orange County where they perceive they are safer, according to Shigeto (Chuck) Mayumi, who directs package tour planning for Japan Travel Bureau International in Los Angeles, a large agency that specializes in vacation packages for traveling Japanese.

“More are going directly to Anaheim,” he said. And with the rising popularity of team sports like professional hockey in Japan, more Japanese are becoming aware of Anaheim’s distinct identity because of the Mighty Ducks.

Moreover, foreigners are increasingly taking West Coast package tours that circumvent the usual port of entry, Los Angeles International Airport.

The Anaheim Hilton and Towers, for instance, is involved in marketing packages to Asians that make San Francisco their gateway to the United States. From there, they fly to Las Vegas and Orange County through John Wayne Airport. Some may never set foot in Los Angeles.

To underscore the program, the hotel is hosting 80 top Japanese travel agents next month, and chances are they will see very little of Orange County’s northern neighbors.

“It is a way of combatting all the media problems we are having in Southern California,” said Andrew Fransen, the Hilton’s Japanese-speaking director of leisure sales.

While they do not show up in the greatest numbers of any nationality--that distinction usually goes to the Canadians--Japanese visitors are highly prized because they are a major market and tend to spend heavily. The average Japanese tourist stays seven to 10 days in the United States and shells out $3,000 to $4,000, according to Elaine Cali, spokeswoman for the Anaheim Area Visitor & Convention Bureau.

About 80% of the 800,000 Japanese who visit California stop off at Disneyland. “That doesn’t mean they all stay in Orange County, but a good portion of them spend at least a night here,” Cali said.

Local hotels routinely offer native meals, hosts and other enticements to attract Japanese visitors. Some have even put together wedding packages for Japanese couples who elope to escape their country’s ritualistic--and expensive--marriage process.

So the last thing that local tourism executives want is the kind of media attention in the Japanese media that has befallen Los Angeles since the weekend killings.

The deaths of Go Matsuura and Takuma Ito, both 19, outside a San Pedro supermarket have struck deeply in Japan, where violence is rare and guns are strictly controlled. Though Orange County had its own disaster last year--the brush fires in Laguna Beach that razed hundreds of homes--it never was viewed as a personal safety threat to the Japanese.

John Dravinski, general manager of the Ritz-Carlton in Dana Point, said that the media tidal wave rolling from San Pedro to Japan is insurmountable. He said that individual hotels need get hold of their customers and reassure them that all is well.

The Anaheim Area Visitor & Convention Bureau, which has a $4.5-million annual advertising budget, has yet to launch the kind of a fax counterattacks to travel agents in the wake of the San Pedro killings that usually follow earthquakes.

Finding the right mix of local and regional appeal is tricky, Cali said. “It’s a real thin tightrope you walk on those issues. We are close to L.A. (but) you don’t want to be interpreted as taking advantage of someone else’s disadvantages.”

Times staff writer Jeffrey L. Rabin in Los Angeles contributed to this report.