Ready for a Close-Up, LA? Out of the Way, Hollywood

When travel writers and tour operators come to town for their annual convention next week, Los Angeles boosters plan to show them that the city is more than just Hollywood. It’s also Pasadena and Long Beach.

The agency charged with persuading people to visit L.A. will have a captive audience with the International Pow Wow, as the confab is called. And LA Inc., the name for the city’s convention and visitors bureau, knows better than to restrict its pitch to city limits. To tout Los Angeles, you need all the help you can get from your neighbors.

The city of Los Angeles has struggled for years to capture a sizable share of the international and domestic convention market, consistently losing out to rivals with big convention centers as close by as Anaheim and as far away as New York. The nation’s second-largest city may have good weather and movie stars, but it can be a hard sell as a stand-alone destination.

“It’s always a great idea to be promoting, but you’ve got to have the product,” said Alan Reay, president of the Costa Mesa-based Atlas Hospitality Group, a hotel developer, “and that’s the problem.”

So LA Inc. commissioned the California Institute of the Arts School of Film and Video to produce a film on the cultural highlights of the city, and beyond, including the Huntington Library and Gardens in Pasadena and the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach.

The three-minute film, which will be aired at the International Pow Wow, also showcases the Getty Center, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Museum of Contemporary Art, which are in fact in Los Angeles proper.

“It’s one more step to remind buyers that L.A. is distinctive,” said Michael Collins, executive vice president of LA Inc.

Critics say it’s distinctive for its chronic shortage of hotel rooms downtown and its next to nonexistent city-center nightlife, reasons conventioneers snub the Los Angeles Convention Center. Last year, there were 16 major conventions in L.A. By contrast, San Diego hosted 60 and Anaheim 87.

“We struggle with an image problem in L.A., so anything you can do to try to give a better idea of what we do is valuable,” said Jack Kyser, chief economist at the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.

For its part, the city of Pasadena is pleased to be lumped in with its neighbor nine miles to the south. Leann Lampe, director of public relations for the Pasadena Convention and Visitors Bureau, called the metropolitan area “confusing” to potential visitors. The LA Inc. approach shows that the whole area “ does have a lot of culture and it’s all extremely accessible.”