More exciting than Frisco?
It's good news that New Orleans has a safer image with potential tourists but hardly surprising. Efforts to get crime under control and make the city safer for residents as well as visitors have been a success story, and tourists are getting the message.
The more surprising revelation in a survey commissioned by the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corp. is that tourists rank our city so high as an exciting destination -- higher than such tourism meccas as San Francisco and Orlando.
They survey, commissioned by the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corp., found that 75 percent of respondents "strongly agreed" that New Orleans is an exciting city; 65 percent had the same opinion of San Francisco and 66 percent of Orlando.
New Orleans was measured against those two cities because San Francisco is the "gold standard" city for tourism, said Gary Esolen, executive vice president of the tourism corporation, and Orlando is a big competitor in this region.
Beating that kind of competition is quite impressive. Those of us who live in and around New Orleans already know that it's a vibrant, unique place. In fact, it makes many other cities look bland by comparison.
Still, it's gratifying to learn that so many people elsewhere share that view. That bodes well for the continued health of our important tourism industry.
The combination of being both safe and exciting is pretty hard to beat, too. It means that New Orleans can continue to build its reputation as a fun place to take the family, not just a great place for adults to party.
Of course, none of this means that New Orleans can rest on its laurels. The survey, conducted by Longwoods International of Toronto, indicated that New Orleans has lost some of its market share to the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
Even while overnight trips to New Orleans increased, from 11 million in 1997 to 11.1 million last year, "marketable pleasure trips" by regional visitors declined from 3 million to 2.3 million.
"We used to be alone between Orlando and San Antonio as a regional destination, but we're not alone anymore," Mr. Esolen said.
The competition, in other words, isn't the City by the Bay, it's the casinos on the Gulf. And that's a challenge that tourism officials will have to address.
Still, a city that's more exciting than San Francisco should be able to hold its own against Gulfport and Biloxi. After all, gambling is only exciting when you're winning.