Hurricane Katrina may have devastated New Orleans and driven its residents and visitors away, but the city's tourism industry has rebounded big time over the last 20 years.
In the year before Katrina, around 10 million visitors spent about $5 billion in the city. Twenty years later, both of those figures have doubled, with more than 19 million visitors spending more than $10 billion in New Orleans.
Now, tourism leaders say, the sky's the limit for the Crescent City's tourism economy.
"We're on a constant quest to be the best version of ourselves that we can be," New Orleans and Company CEO Walt Leger, III, said.
According to Leger, that means making sure New Orleans is an incredible place to live and and incredible place to visit.
"The tourism, hospitality, and travel sector of our economy is essential to rebuilding the economy overall, so we have to continue to build and get better," Leger said, pointing to the upgrades to local museums and hotels, the construction of the new airport, and renovations to the convention center and the Superdome as examples of how the city positioned itself after Katrina to be a major player in the tourism industry.
New Orleans and Company chief marking officer Mark Romig says over the last 20 years, their message to the world has been simple.
"You and your family could still come to the city and be part of our return," Romig said.
According to Romig, city leaders have pushed "volun-tourism," letting the rest of the world know that people could help in New Orleans's recovery effort just by visiting.
"New Orleans and Company aggressively marketed to the rest of the nation about how people could come in and experience what they loved about New Orleans for so many years and so many decades," Romig said.
Romig and Lege says hosting 2013 Super Bowl helped the city prove that it was open for business and ready to take on visitors. Now, they're goal is to keep the city's tourism momentum going... and they say New Orleans residents will play a major role in doing so.
"That's what has been the magic, if I can use that word, to get through this," Romig said. "We lean each other. We all come together."
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