Tourism Boosters Walk a Fine Line

Gulf Coast tourism boosters face a quandary: They need to keep hotels, casinos and beachfront bars humming. But what to say about that huge oil slick swirling just offshore?

From Louisiana to Florida, local authorities are urging travelers to ignore the headlines and head to the coast, pitching it as charitable.

"Although the level of actual environmental and economic impact cannot be realized until the spill is capped and possibly reaches our shores, your visit will help to ensure that our local tourism economy?which is a cornerstone to our growth?remains vibrant," a regional tourism group, SouthCoast USA, said in a statement this past week to travel writers, travel websites and area tourism bureaus.

"Our local economy depends on it now more than ever?and you'll be glad you came."

At the same time, local officials are worried that they risk emulating Larry Vaughn, the fictional mayor from the movie "Jaws," who was so unwilling to lose tourist dollars that he refused to warn visitors they were frolicking in shark-infested waters.

"Everybody is making a conscious effort to be honest and positive at the same time," said Lee Sentell, Alabama's tourism director.

More than two weeks after the Deepwater Horizon offshore rig erupted in flames, oil continued to spurt from the well a mile beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. But, as of Friday, the slick had touched only outlying islands of Louisiana, while sparing Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.
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Beth Carriere, a tourism official in Bay St. Louis, Miss., which is about 25 miles west of Biloxi, declared the coast "open for business."

"The most generous people in the world are Americans," said Ms. Carriere. "If those generous hearts want to help us, coming to visit us and helping our economy is what we need."

At the Beau Rivage hotel and casino in Biloxi, the staff receives a dozen or so calls a day from visitors wondering whether to back out of their plans. But the hotel has seen few cancellations, according to a spokeswoman for the MGM Mirage-owned property.

One of those who sought and received reassurance this week was Vonterris Hagan, a 47-year-old nurse from Washington, D.C., who had planned for two months to stop at the Beau Rivage during a drive from New Orleans to Atlanta with her daughter and mother.

"We were thinking we should skip it," Ms. Hagan said from a lounge chair at the hotel's pool. "We thought we'd smell a little stench in the air."

There was no smell, but Ms. Hagan and her daughter decided to avoid the beach itself anyway.

Tourism boosters on the Florida panhandle have put a live video feed on their website showing oil-free waves hitting oil-free beaches in Pensacola. Officials there are using also social-media outlets to reassure potential visitors. "Favorable winds today keep oil away from Florida's coast," they posted on Twitter this week.

They also are urging, via Twitter posts, for tourists to put their vacation photos up on Facebook. "Help us show the world it's beautiful here," they posted on Twitter.

The travel industry generated a combined $94 billion in business last year in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, according to the U.S. Travel Association, a trade group that has tried to spread the word on its website that a "state of emergency" doesn't necessarily imply any danger to the vacationing public.

"If we can dispel the myth that we're covered in oil and closed, we can minimize the impact on our industry," said Richard Forester, executive director of the Mississippi Gulf Coast Convention and Visitors Bureau in Biloxi. "If the situation changes, we'll address that in an open and honest manner."

Tourism is a $1.4 billion industry along Mississippi's coast, including revenue from casinos and convention centers, a critical component of an economy still recovering from Hurricane Katrina and the national recession. No convention organizers have canceled, and one group just booked a schooner cruise for early June, Mr. Forester's sales team said.

Mississippi's tourism representative in the United Kingdom, David Nicholson, reported to his bosses this week that European media are giving heavy coverage to the disaster, but are emphasizing Louisiana and Florida, not the areas in between.

"Apart from maps showing the region and the oil, I have seen very little reference (if any) to the Mississippi Gulf Coast," Mr. Nicholson wrote in an email to the state tourism division. He said that while "this is not much solace," Europeans' lack of knowledge about U.S. geography might work in the state's favor.

Sitting at the Beau Rivage pool this week were a handful of Australian casino managers, in town for a gambling convention and unperturbed by the prospect of oil on the beach. "I'll be honest," said Jason Russell, a 37-year-old from New South Wales. "I didn't even know there was a beach here."

"I didn't even know where Biloxi was," chimed in his colleague, Alex Natsis, 39, also from New South Wales.

Alabama tourism authorities are monitoring reports of the slick's spread daily. "From what the health department people tell us, it will be about like what a Wal-Mart parking lot looks like after a rain," said Mr. Sentell, the Alabama tourism director. Should that happen, most visitors, he thinks, would be happy taking in the sun on the beach, then swimming in the pool.