Travel News

Post-Katrina recovery on track in New Orleans

The city of New Orleans saw its tourism industry return to something close to normal levels last year as it endeavoured to overcome the after-effects of Hurricane Katrina.

Some 7.1 million people visited New Orleans in 2007, compared to 3.7 million in the previous year. In a healthy year prior to Hurricane Katrina, the city saw between 8.5 million and nine million visitors annually.

Nearly three quarters (70 per cent) of last year's visitors said they came for leisure purposes, while 13 per cent came for a convention or tradeshow and 11 per cent came for business reasons, according to research by the University of New Orleans and local tourism associations.

The proportion of people whose visit was related to the hurricane, such as insurance and emergency personnel, fell substantially from 31 per cent in 2006 to four per cent last year.

Sandra Shilstone, chief executive of the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation, said: "We learned from research that we needed to reach as many people as possible as quickly as possible to convince them to return post-Katrina.

"We will continue to use all of our efforts in marketing, public relations and internet to work with the hospitality community in bringing leisure visitor numbers even higher than before."

This year looks set to be another positive one for New Orleans, with events such as an NBA All-Star basketball game and the Mardi Gras festival ensuring that the tourism year got off to a strong start.