Tourists Rediscovered L.A. County Last Year : Economy: World Cup helped bring 4.4% more visitors. Industry expects slower growth for ’95.

The World Cup international soccer tournament helped boost the number of overnight visitors to Los Angeles County by 4.4% last year, but the growth rate in 1995 may slow to about half that, tourism industry officials predicted Wednesday.

Recovering from adverse publicity because of riots, earthquakes and fires, Los Angeles County attracted 22.2 million visitors in 1994, the best performance since 1991, when 23.3 million people traveled to the area. They spent $9.5 billion, which translates into a total economic impact of $22 billion and 437,000 jobs, the Los Angeles Convention & Visitors Bureau said.

“Los Angeles has turned the corner,” said Gilbert T. Ray, a lawyer with O’Melveny & Myers and outgoing chairman of the bureau.

“Not only can we see the light at the end of the tunnel, we’re at the end of the tunnel,” Ray told a crowd of about 1,000 tourism industry representatives at the bureau’s annual meeting.

The bureau also released its first study of the local tourism industry, which showed that most of Los Angeles’ visitors last year came from the United States and more than half of those came from the 13 western states. Among U.S. cities, San Francisco sent the most visitors, accounting for 10.3%.

“Contrary to conventional wisdom, our neighbors to the north love L.A.,” said John Heinritz, marketing vice president for the visitors bureau.

Last year, one out of four visitors was from a foreign country, the study found. Mexico provided the most visitors, followed by Japan and Britain. Eighty-five percent of international visitors traveled here for pleasure, not business, and 72% of domestic visitors were leisure travelers.

So far this year, visitor traffic is running more than 4% ahead of the pace in the same period last year, Heinritz said. For all of 1995, the bureau is predicting a 2% increase in visitors and a 4% increase in spending. The larger increase in spending might be because of the deeper pockets of foreign visitors.

Although Los Angeles lacks a World Cup this year, local theme parks have opened new attractions, Heinritz said. What’s more, the bureau is getting reports from Japan of serious interest in travel packages that will allow visitors to take in the PGA golf tournament at the Riviera Country Club in August and to watch Hideo Nomo pitch for the Dodgers during the same period, he said.

“We feel very optimistic that Los Angeles is going to have a very strong summer tourism season,” Heinritz said.

But the bureau’s greatest hopes are pinned on the 1996 Discover America International Pow Wow, which will be held next June. That international travel industry meeting is expected to draw 5,000 people to Los Angeles.

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Visiting Los Angeles Los Angeles County had 22.2 million overnight visitors last year who spent a total of $9.5 billion. TOTAL VISITORS (Overnight visitors. in millions) 1994: 22.2 *WHAT THEY SPENT (In billions of dollars): Meal, beverages: 2.3 Lodging: 2.2 Shopping: 2.1 Transportation: 2.1* Entertainment: 0.7 Other: 0.1 *Includes $1.5 billion in airport-related travel expenditures Source: Los Angeles Convention & Visitors Bureau