City co-sponsors Essence Music Fest for $250,000

New Orleans CityBusiness, Jun 17, 2002 by Brett Clanton

For the last seven years, the Essence Music Festival has been the brightest spot in New Orleans' notoriously slow summer tourism season.

This year, the city of New Orleans is more involved in keeping it that way. City Hall will contribute $250,000 to the event for the first time as part of a deal made last year to keep the festival in New Orleans through 2006.

Last year, Essence officials made it known they were entertaining offers from Los Angeles, Atlanta and Las Vegas to move the event. In response, then-Mayor Marc Morial and tourism leaders rushed to renegotiate a new contract.

As part of the agreement, City Hall became an official festival sponsor. In exchange, Essence will place the city's promotional signs around the festival and include images of New Orleans in its national magazine.

Beth James, Mayor Ray Nagin's chief economic development aide, says $250,000 is a small price to pay, considering the event helps fill hotel rooms and restaurants during the near-dormant summer convention season. "I hope they'll stay here forever," she says.

Event planners feared earlier this year that attendance at the popular Fourth of July weekend festival would be hurt by the post- Sept. 11 travel slump and dragging recession. They say the reverse has proven true.

Ticket sales for the eighth annual Essence Music Festival are up 60% this year compared with the same point a year ago, says Letena Spriggs-Lindsay, director of communications for Essence Communications Inc. in New York, the promotions arm of the company that publishes the African-American magazine Essence.

Spriggs-Lindsay attributes the jump to a strong evening concert lineup, which boasts chart-topping soul singers India Arie and Alicia Keyes on opening night of the three-day event. Also playing night shows at the Louisiana Superdome will be R&B favorites Mary J. Blige, Brian McKnight and veteran soul singers Al Green and the Isley Brothers.

Last year, the Essence Festival attracted 195,000 fans to the nightly Superdome concerts and daily educational and motivational seminars at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.

"We should be at or exceed attendance from last year," says Louis Edwards with Festival Productions, the local company producing the event.

Ticket prices for the evening concerts in the Superdome rose this year from between $30 and $75 to a range of $30 to $100, reflecting the rising costs of putting on the event, says Edwards, who doubts the change will affect attendance.

Higher-than-expected hotel bookings are another sign Essence Festival is having a good year. Bob Bourg, vice president and general manager of New Orleans-based Destination Management Inc., the festival's official tour operator, says sales of his company's Essence Festival hotel packages are up by 1% to 2% over last year. The marginal increase is encouraging considering Destination Management had earlier "shaved sales projections in half" for Essence just after the Sept. 11 attacks, he says.

That should be good news for everyone in the local tourism industry, he says. "Essence makes the summer. Without it (New Orleans has) nothing."

One persistent complaint Essence Fest organizers have had is with the price of hotel rooms in New Orleans. Essence officials have suggested hotels spike rates during the Fourth of July weekend well above the bargain-basement rates charged the rest of the summer.

Hoteliers say it has nothing to do with Essence patrons but that rates just go up during busy periods.

Hotel rates typically rise between 5% to 7% over the previous year, says Tommy Morel, regional marketing director for Starwood Hotels & Resorts, which owns the Sheraton New Orleans Hotel on Canal Street. And during peak demand periods, he says, hotels always try to increase rates. "We don't try to kill them; we just try to cover our expenses," he says.

As part of the new deal to keep the Essence Festival in New Orleans, many local hotels have agreed to set aside blocks of discounted rooms for festival-goers during the July Fourth weekend.

Essence's Spriggs-Lindsay did not know whether festival- goers had complaints this year about hotel pricing.

Toni Rice says New Orleans should do whatever it takes to keep Essence happy. As director of sales and services at the publicly-funded New Orleans Multicultural Tourism Network, Rice believes Essence Festival helps show the city that the multicultural tourism market is a niche ripe for growth.