NEW ORLEANS -- This week is giving the New Orleans tourism industry a much-needed boost after a slow summer.
The industry employs 70,000 people, and New Orleans is trying some new techniques to fill in the gaps, still left by Hurricane Katrina, and now, the oil spill.
At the French Market, business has been much slower than the music this summer.
“There are times when you don't even get a table out here,” said Danielle Linder, hostess at a French Market restaurant.
Linder also works deeper in the French Quarter, where all kinds of tourist-based businesses have been feeling the pinch.
“I also work on Bourbon Street, and there are times when there's not anybody in the club whatsoever. There are times when there's not anybody in the restaurant,” she said.
But the Labor Day weekend gave many in the tourism industry hope with thousands in town for Southern Decadence.
“I think if you look at it being the celebration of five years of Katrina, I think that, in itself, and I think with the recent troubles in the gulf, I just think everybody flocked here in support of New Orleans,” said Darren Mills, assistant to the owner of the Bourbon Pub.
The celebration of gays and lesbians has drawn up to a hundred thousand people to the city in the past, and so far this year, the event is getting rave reviews.
“Success. Absolute success. It just puts us back on the map, and we're looking forward now to Halloween,” Mills said.
The rest of the tourism industry is also looking forward to the holiday. They're trying to spread New Orleans' love affair with Halloween nationwide.
“We really have been doing a lot to market New Orleans as a Halloween destination. We're a haunted city anyway, and there's a lot of fun ties to it,” said Kelly Schulz, spokesperson for the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau.
From Frenchmen Street to the French Quarter, New Orleanians take costuming for the holiday, and on Bourbon Street any day, to new heights.
Tourism experts said this week’s NFL kickoff will also be a big bonus for the industry, especially with the nationally televised concert and Saints game.
It's a needed bump, since conventions aren't expected to pick back up until October.
“September is gonna be slow. And that's because five years ago, when we had Katrina underway, a lot of the planners who had meetings scheduled for September 2010 had to go elsewhere because the fate of our convention business was very uncertain,” Schulz said.
But she said the good news is the $5 million in ad money from BP appears to have softened the blow to the tourism industry this summer, allowing businesses to keep the worst of 2010 in the past, while hoping for the best in the future.
The Convention and Visitors Bureau is also promoting a culinary restaurant campaign in the fall. Some of the city's finest restaurants offering three course dinners for less than $35.
