Many groups that had plans to meet in New Orleans had to scramble after Hurricane Katrina. Many scrambled here.
By STEVE HUETTEL, Times Staff Writer
Published November 11, 2005
Organizers of the annual Underwater Intervention conference in New Orleans knew they had a problem hours after Hurricane Katrina sent floodwaters surging over the city's levees.
They soon saw television images of angry evacuees at the Morial Convention Center. News crews were camped in a hotel reserved as headquarters for their event, which has brought 2,700 people from undersea construction and exploration businesses to the Big Easy each January.
"It became clear there was no way," said Rebecca Roberts, who runs the conference for two nonprofit trade groups.
After a couple of weeks of scrambling, organizers picked Tampa over a handful of competing cities.
Two-and-a-half months after Katrina, Tampa is reaping a miniwindfall from conventions and meetings forced to relocate from New Orleans. The city hosted one event last month and has four more, including Underwater Intervention, on the books for 2006.
Combined, they will bring more than 4,500 visitors who are expected to spend more than $5-million, according to the Tampa Bay Convention & Visitors Bureau. They will buy 8,600 hotel room nights - 3 percent of the total for conventions and meetings in Hillsborough County next year.
Tourism officials, however, are careful to avoid looking like they're poaching on the misfortune of New Orleans.
"We're not aggressively seeking out these conventions," said Karen Brand, spokeswoman for the bureau. "If (groups) call, we'll obviously help. But we want to be sensitive to our colleagues in New Orleans."
Pinellas County landed at least two groups. The Association of Family and Conciliation Courts will bring 700 people to the Westin Innisbrook Resort in May 2006 and the TradeWinds Island Resorts will host a smaller accounting and finance association in December.
Rebuilding tourism is critical to New Orleans' recovery. A record 10.1-million people visited the city last year and spent $4.9-billion. About 81,000 people were employed in tourism, about 20 percent of the city's work force, the local convention and visitors bureau says.
New Orleans ranked as the nation's fifth-biggest convention city, behind Las Vegas, Chicago, Orlando and New York.
Finding a replacement city for Underwater Intervention was no small task for the two sponsors, the Association of Diving Contractors International and the Marine Technology Society's committee on remotely operated vehicles.
Even before organizers could contact hotel and venue operators in New Orleans, they made a list of replacement cities.
Their first choice was Houston. But tourism officials considered the convention too small to shoehorn it into the precious few facilities still available, said Ross Saxon of Diving Contractors International.
Organizers had to move quickly. They wanted to keep the convention in the traditional late January time frame. If it was held later in the year, Underwater Intervention would create scheduling conflicts for paying exhibitors and attendees whose business gets busy in the summer.
"The longer you wait, the harder to get the dates you need and the (exhibition) venues you want," Roberts said.
They ruled out Orlando as too expensive. That left Tampa, which hosted the convention in 2001, the year before organizers began a long-term deal with New Orleans that was to run through 2010.
Staffers from Tampa's convention bureau moved so quickly, Saxon said, that the planners didn't give serious consideration to fallback cities such as Las Vegas and San Diego.
The late move will mean a smaller event with about 2,300 attendees and 170 exhibitors at the Tampa Convention Center, organizers said. Tourism officials still expect a big payoff: more than $1-million in spending just by people attending the convention.
