Thursday, June 17, 2010
Mayor Landrieu requests $75 million from BP to promote area tourism
Posted by Will Coviello on Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 4:20 PM
Mayor Mitch Landrieu joined with the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) and other citywide business groups at Gallier Hall this morning to ask for a $75 million check from BP to market New Orleans as a tourism destination across the country.
Landrieu — joined by business leaders at Gallier Hall this morning.
The money will be used to augment the $5 million New Orleans advertising campaign which Gambit reported on yesterday.
The $75 million tourism ask precedes a broad platform press conference scheduled at the CVB this afternoon to include business and political leaders from across the state — responding to the BP disaster on a variety of policy and political levels. The theme of this afternoon's press conference is "Move Forward Now: the announcement of a four-pronged platform and call to action."
“There’s a very broad-based business coalition, and we’ll be urging action on a number of different issues,” says Greg Rusovich, chairman of the Business Council of New Orleans. “[The $75 million] is just one of several key issues. There’ll be a platform that this broad-based coalition will be calling for immediate action on.
“We’re talking about oil and gas, we’re talking about coastal restoration, the coastal wetlands, we’re talking about how to get a better command and control process, and the tourism front, and several others as well,” Rusovich continues — declining to be more specific about this afternoon's plan.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke met with a closed “town hall” meeting of industry leaders at the CVB last Thursday night, June 10. He listened to emotional testimony “from Vietnamese shrimpers, all the way up to the general managers from the biggest hotels in town,” says CVB President Steve Perry, adding that Locke “likes the idea” of the $75 million ask. Locke's office did not return a call for comment.
Perry says the role of the mayor’s office in lining up this morning's $75 million request has been pivotal.
“And this is what’s changed. From eight years here, we’ve never had a situation where all the business interests have come together, and the mayor’s office has been an actual true resource and supporter,” he says.
The request, on the mayor's letterhead, was addressed to BP headquarters at 1 St. James Square, London, though it's unclear whether it's actually been delivered there. In the letter, Landrieu writes:
The Gulf oil spill has the great potential to negatively impact the bit of progress we’ve made since Hurricane Katrina, and we must be prepared as a city to stand up for our tourism and hospitality industry.
Tourism is a perception-driven industry. Even after significant investment in marketing, as of April 2010, New Orleans had only returned to 75 percent of its pre-Katrina visitor levels.
Direct support to New Orleans from BP for this most recent recovery effort is without question an essential key to our success.
The $75 million ask has also been discussed with BP through “representatives of theirs,” Perry says, although he declined to put Gambit in touch with anyone from the company: “They’ve asked us not to do that.”
BP did not return a call for comment on this story.
“This is about a unified ask by every major corporation and the mayor of New Orleans,” Perry continues. “I think there’s a good chance that we’re going to get this money.”
—Matt Davis
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Comments (5)
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Our mayor, Obama Lite, wants his cut of the shakedown money his benefactor extracted from BP yesterday. Mitch will have his own slush fund now too! The $75 million will go to "mitigate the long-term effects on tourism" i.e. cash payments to all those individuals & businesses that helped Mitch finance his campaign. He owes a lot of people, as he borrowed 100% of the money he spent to get elected, plus an assist from the White House for his sister's treachery on the health care bill.
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NOLA need a good marketing campaign. Here are my offers: 1.) CUT TO: An ample table of food and libations with people celebrating. Camera pans slowly across table until it gets to a cocktail glass, which is knocked over by a sleeve of a reveler. The glass tips and begins to tumble, and the camera freezes. . . Text top fade: Beware of spills Text bottom fade: in New Orleans 2.) CUT TO: A pan across a scenic neighborhood street on St. Charles. Birds are chirping. A streetcar passes in front of a classic NOLA house. Text top fade: There is a house Text bottom fade: in New Orleans 3.) CUT TO: Arms shucking oysters like a pro. You hear the sounds of the shucking and revelry in the background. Text top fade: See food Text bottom fade: in New Orleans 4.) CUT TO: A fancy dining table in a good restaurant. Food is placed on the table. A salad is placed. A bottle of olive oil is seen being held by a waiter. Oil is dribbled on garden salad. Text top fade: A little oil is a good thing Text bottom fade: in New Orleans 5.) CUT TO: Football revelry. Scenes of plays from the past Super Bowl. Text top fade: We've got black, gold Text bottom fade: in New Orleans 6.) CUT TO: Brass heavy jazz ensemble in a crowded night club Text top fade: Deep Quarter blow-out Text bottom fade: in New Orleans :)
I read the following article in the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2010/jun/16/new-orleans-ad-campaign-bp-britain I am British and I am angry at the racism that is coming out from america over this oil spill. Anger towards BP is fair enough, but why attack British people? You would think that after American taking Britain to Iraq into a useless war, they would be apologitic to the British nation. How many British solders die for the sake of American greed to get its hands on American oil? As usual Americans have double standards. I was listening a Radio show and heard that the victims of the Bhopal disaster from 1984 are still waiting for compensation. Some 20,000 people where killed from a leak from a Chemical plant, but to date the poor people in India have not been compensated. The sole survivor was offered 5 cents for the death of 11 members of her family. is that the price of 11 human beings?. Is that how american companies value human life! What did the ordinary British person have to do with BP's oil rig? The difference between british and american people, is that we are ready to condem BP for bad behaviour, but Americans are too patriotic to see between rights and wrong. They will not speak about the injustices caused by american companies.
Relax, anon. You are reading way too much into this slogan. We can play tit-for-tat on US vs. Britain corporate malfeasance (it's a tie! :)), but as far at that's concerned the British have a few hundreds years of imperialism over the US, extracting riches from its holdings across the globe, especially in the Subcontinent. Also, the US didn't "take" Britain into Iraq -- your poodle leader didn't have the chutzpah to stand up to the US. Had he done so, Georgie Boy wouldn't have had that key support. Blair had the power to do so and he didn't. Don't blame Americans for that; blame your gutless poodle leader. PS: We saved your butts in WWII. If it weren't for the US, you would have written your post in German, so STFU.
Personally, if I were BP, I'd say see you in court. It took 17 years for the Exxon company to finally pay out for the Exxon Valdez disaster and the final payment was cut, on appeal, from $5m to $2.5. At the moment there are still questions to be answered like - why didn't the blowout equipment work (US manufactured so why aren't they involved in this compensation), the well was only 66% owned by BP - so where are their partners on this? Oh yes, their American, so they're probably hiding behind their Mamas skirts. That, after all Olegonzo, is what you lot did in the WWII until the Japanese woke you all up wasn't it? Don't say you "saved our butts" - as usual the cowardly Americans didn't help anyone but themselves even when our government at the time begged for help - it took an attack on your lot while you were half asleep to finally get you off your backsides. The USA never do a darn thing unless something is in it for them - neither do the Brits but we admit it and we know that no one likes us. The US thinks the world wants to be like them when, actually, we all laugh at the US behind their backs.
