clarinews@clarinet.com (ROYAL BRIGHTBILL) (01/19/90)
UPI SportsFeature
------
NEW ORLEANS (UPI) -- Five days before San Francisco and Denver
ensured their roles in Super Bowl XXIV, the city hosted a party for its
people movers -- the cabbies, transit operators and limo drivers -- on the
floor of the Superdome where the game will be played.
The intent was to recognize the value of the drivers as
ambassadors, and to ensure good first and last impressions to the
expected 80,000 Super Bowl visitors.
The sport-social event of the year could have a direct economic
impact of as much as $145 million on New Orleans, based on estimates of
the last Super Bowl in Miami, but the chronically cash-short city is
considering the long-term effects as well.
Tourism has become increasingly important in the years since the
oil and gas industry collapsed, taking with it thousands of jobs and
millions of dollars in salaries. So the city is becoming more sensitive
about its image, which is not all Garden District homes, four-star
restaurants and great music.
Despite that concern, the city has been embarrassed by
price-gouging on hotel rooms in the rush for Super Bowl accommodations
and a turf war among limousine drivers that immobilized some top
television program executives attending a convention.
The demand for hotel rooms has sent prices from a normal range of
$100-$140 to $300-$500 a night for Super Bowl weekend. Citizens are
offering their rooms, condos and homes for rent for prices ranging from
$200 a night up to $3,500 for a three-bedroom house, with pool, maid,
limousine and driver.
Beverly Gianna, director of the Greater New Orleans Tourist and
Convention Bureau, blamed the exhorbitant hotel room rates on
out-of-state tour operators who leased larged blocks of rooms well ahead
of time and tied them to travel packages.
``The local tour operators who are tops in their field are upset
about it, as are the top hotels,'' she said.
Some people have rented rooms as far away as Baton Rouge and
Biloxi, Miss., about 90 miles from New Orleans. Gianna said that was not
necessary.
``In the tri-parish area (of Orleans, Jefferson and St. Bernard)
there are about 25,500 hotel rooms, and there are rooms available,'' she
said. ``Every day we try to update the list of rooms. It may not be in
the hotel you want or vicinty, but there are rooms and they are
available.''
A San Francisco radio station told Gianna of a Canadian tour
operator who offered a three-night Super Bowl package, without game
tickets, for $1,250 per person based on double occupancy.
``That's outrageous,'' she said, adding the hotel general manager
told her he sold 90 of his 250 rooms to tour operators, none of which
were in Canada. ``That means the hotel sold the rooms to a tour operator
who sold them to another tour operator.''
Despite its reputation as a town that seems to be on a constant
party, with_ annual such events as Sugar Bowl, Mardi Gras and the Jazz
and Heritage Festival, New Orleans_ suffers from a blighted economy and
the drug and crime problems common to all major urban areas.
Super Bowl visitors will see signs of a troubled economy in the
boarded up stores on Canal St., the main downtown thoroughfare. The
boards have been decorated with murals painted by inmates of the Orleans
Parish Jail. Some shops display their wares in the windows of vacant
stores to give an image of vitality.
New Orleans had the third-highest murder rate in the nation last
year. Most of the crimes were committed in low income housing projects
and were drug-related, but at least two tourists were murdered in the
French Quarter.
Youth violence marred the Martin Luther King Day celebrations for
the second straight year. One boy was stabbed to death and an innocent
bystander was critically wounded when he got caught in the crossfire of
a gang fight.
Despite its attempts to put on the best face possible, sometimes
the city shoots itself in the foot anyway.
At the recent National Association of Television Program Executives
convention, some limousines waiting for television executives were
immobilzed because they did not display the proper certificates. The
drivers complained they were denied temporary certificates when they
applied for them, even though extra limos were needed.
_a_d_v_._ _w_e_e_k_e_n_d_ _e_d_i_t_i_o_n_s_ _J_a_n_._ _2_0_-_2_1