Louisiana’s still standing

With so many lives lost and a city in ruins, most members of Louisiana officialdom would rather not say something that has to be on their mind.

It might be considered too unseemly, too easy to misinterpret as callous or petty. But Louisiana needs tourism, and most of the state’s attractions are open for business.

“One of the big issues we face is most folks think that if New Orleans is gone, then the entire state is (gone) also,” e-mails Gerald Breaux, executive director of the Lafayette Convention and Visitors Commission, a privately funded organization.

In a follow-up phone interview, Breaux points out that 75 percent of Louisiana is open for visitors and depends heavily on tourism. Visitors spent $10 billion in the state last year, according to the Travel Industry Association of America.

Of course, lodging is unavailable at the moment; for example, evacuees and rescue workers have been filling nearly all of greater Lafayette’s 4,800 hotel rooms.

But Breaux predicts that most of those units will be freed up by the end of September. He’s hoping visitors will return to enjoy the music, food and unique personalities of towns north and west of New Orleans that Hurricane Katrina left untouched. Lafayette, 133 miles west of New Orleans, is in the heart of Cajun country.

“We will get a second economic blow when no one thinks they can still travel to our state,” Breaux says.

One tourism magnet only an hour west of New Orleans is the River Road area of restored antebellum plantation homes. Most, if not all, remain open for guided tours.

Christy Naquin, marketing director of the Oak Alley plantation, reports by phone that the entire facility is fully operational – from the mansion to the dining room to the gift shop and bed-and-breakfast.

“None of us has had major damage,” Naquin says. Although some plantations were often unreachable by phone last week, Naquin says she was able to contact all but one of the 11 plantations on the River Road, and all she reached reported they were in working order.

However, on the River Road portion of the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places Web site, a popup sponsored by the Park Service and the Federal Emergency Management Agency tells visitors to stay away.

The message says, in part, “It is currently unwise to travel to the area.”

Naquin begs to differ. “All we had were some leaves blow down, and we raked them up,” she says.

One day last week, just seven people came to visit Oak Alley, “and we were glad to see them.” But she points out that was nowhere near the average visitation of more than 600 a day.

“We are a private nonprofit and rely solely on ticket sales,” Naquin says. “We can’t rely on locals for all of our business. We welcome people from all over. Tourism in Louisiana is not just New Orleans.”

Brandy Evans of the Shreveport-Bossier Convention and Tourist Bureau sent out an urgent press release telling the nation that “Louisiana needs everyone to keep the economic engine running,” noting that tourism is the second biggest sector of the state’s economy.

Writer and musician Ben Sandmel ended up in the Shreveport area after retreating from his home in the hard-hit New Orleans suburb of Metairie. Just 24 hours before Katrina began pounding the gulf shore, Sandmel drove back roads toward the far northern edge of the state.

He says, via cell phone, that the trip reminded him of upstate Louisiana’s many charms.

“I saw beautiful countryside, pine woods, piney hills, wonderful places to canoe and camp out,” he says. “And the Cajun country I went through – that’s all unscathed as far east as Houma.”