1984 World's Fair sparked surge in New Orleans conventions, tourism

New Orleans CityBusiness, Apr 25, 2005 by Richard A. Webster

Experts say modern-day tourism in New Orleans sprang from a single event - the 1984 Louisiana World's Fair.

From the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition in New Orleans came the Riverwalk and the redevelopment of the Warehouse District, which spurred a cultural renaissance that included world-renowned restaurants, the Julia Street art galleries and the Children's, Ogden and D-Day museums, among others.

But the greatest impact the World's Fair had on tourism was the construction of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, said Stephen Perry, president of the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau.

The carving out of that property for the Convention Center was the most important economic development event in any business sector in the last 25 years because it spurred what has been billions of dollars in tourism, Perry said.

Twenty-five years ago, the oil and gas industry powered the economic engine of New Orleans. Tourism then consisted mostly of leisure travel and special events such as Mardi Gras and the Sugar Bowl, resulting in long stretches of sub-par business.

In 1980, there were only 18,500 hotel rooms in the New Orleans area. But the city added 7,000 hotel rooms leading up to the 1984 World's Fair.

We were all focused on the upcoming World's Fair, said Bill Langkopp, executive vice president of the Greater New Orleans Hotel and Lodging Association. And then the bottom fell out of the oil and gas industry in 1982. But for some strange reason the New Orleans economy has always been out of step with the rest of the country so we didn't experience the fallout until after the World's Fair.

The World's Fair in New Orleans has generally been viewed as an economic failure, but it was a seminal moment for New Orleans, Langkopp said.

Contrary to what people have said about the effect of the World's Fair, it was good for our economy, he said. It gave us a boost through the traditionally slow months of May through October. Unfortunately, in 1985 it went away along with the oil and gas industry and everything else.

In 1985, with the World's Fair a distant memory and the oil industry's presence in the city quickly shrinking, there were 25,500 hotel rooms in New Orleans and no business, said Eddie Jacobs, president of the Greater New Orleans Hotel and Lodging Association. The hotel occupancy rate stood at 52 percent.

In the late '80s the International Hotel, now the Doubletree, would shut its doors during December because it was so slow, Jacobs said.

From 1985 to 1993, there was little growth in the tourism sector as New Orleans struggled through the oil bust. But after the second phase of the convention center opened in 1993, convention business became hotter than ever, Jacobs said.

From 1993 through 2004, 10,000 hotel rooms were added for the present total of 38,000.

The Convention Center changed the nature of the city's economy and it happened at the perfect time because it enabled tourism to replace oil and gas, which was about to go bust as the city's core business, Perry said. Without tourism, the city didn't have an industry that could grow fast enough to replace oil and gas in terms of investment and employment.

Before the convention center, meetings and trade shows went to Rivergate, a 128,000-square-foot facility at the foot of Canal Street.

After the 360,000-square-foot first phase of the convention center was built for the World's Fair, Rivergate was demolished in 1995 to make way for Harrah's Casino.

Today, the convention center has 1.1 million square feet of exhibition space. Construction of a fourth phase, which has been tied up in court due to disputes over awarding contracts, would add 500,000 square feet to the center.

Langkopp said the tourism industry's rise to the top of the economic ladder in New Orleans did not happen overnight. In the early half of the century, the city economy was based on agriculture before being supplanted by oil and gas.

As that faded, we have ascended, he said. But it's not like we've been striving for this position. We would love for oil and gas to be strong. We would love for the financial community or the medical community to be strong because when those components of the economy are strong it only helps us.

One of the things we're deficient in as an industry is the day- in, day-out business traveler. If we had that it would level out some of the valleys but we can't do anything about that. All we can do is continue with our own growth.-