New Orleans Gets Northern Hospitality
Staff -- Tradeshow Week, 4/30/2007
The New Orleans hospitality industry is getting a little help from Chicago because of tradeshow business that was forced to move north after Hurricane Katrina.
The Chicago Convention & Tourism Board awarded $447,800 each to the University of New Orleans' Lester E. Kabacoff School of Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Administration and the New Orleans area Habitat for Humanity.
Three associations' shows had to relocate to Chicago: the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, the Natl. School Boards Assn. and the Society of Thoracic Surgeons. The CCTB asked hotels housing attendees from the shows to help raise funds by rebating $10 per paid room per night to New Orleans' hospitality industry. Ultimately, 67 hotels participated, providing the funding that was split by the recipients.
"The CCTB board of directors, the hoteliers that participated in the rebate program and the customers that relocated to Chicago all weighed in on the decision for distribution of funds," said Meghan Risch, spokeswoman for the CCTB. "We wanted the funds to be used to help our colleagues in the visitor industry."
John Williams, director of the Lester E. Kabacoff School, requested the funding to provide scholarships to attract out-of-state students to the hospitality program. Risch said the hospitality industry in New Orleans is short more than 12,000 workers, and many people have moved away.
"The five homes that will be built by Habitat will be for partner families from the hospitality industry," she added.
More than 80 percent of undergraduate and 90 percent of graduate students in the program hold full-time hospitality positions.
