Still a big, fat success

NEW ORLEANS — Despite initial predictions that this year’s early Mardi Gras would result in a poor turnout of out-of-towners, tourism officials say hotel and air bookings have been brisk and this year’s carnival is shaping up to be surprisingly lively.

About 90 percent of the city’s 31,000 hotel rooms have been sold, said Mavis Early, executive director of the Greater New Orleans Hotel and Lodging Association. Early said she expects that to climb to about 92 percent as Mardi Gras creeps closer, matching last year’s totals.

“It’s wonderful that that’s the case,” Early said. “I think we anticipated a bit lower, but we’re very happy with it.”

Fat Tuesday falls on Feb. 5, making it the earliest Mardi Gras since 1983, when the holiday was also Feb. 5.

History dictates that the later the Mardi Gras, the greater the attendance, because potential travelers will have had time to recover from holiday bills, colleges are more likely to be on spring break and the weather is warmer.

This year also had been expected to produce smaller crowds because the main weekend of Mardi Gras overlaps with Super Bowl XLII. The Bacchus parade will roll as New Orleans native Eli Manning’s New York Giants take the field against the New England Patriots. The only other time the Super Bowl has coincided with the big Carnival weekend was 2005, when Mardi Gras fell on Feb. 8 and hotel occupancy was 85 percent to 90 percent.

“We expected this to be a light Mardi Gras,” said Sandra Shilstone, chief executive of the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corp., a public-private agency that promotes leisure tourism. “However, it’s looking a lot more festive than people expected.”

Louis Armstrong International Airport will be at capacity Friday, airport spokeswoman Michelle Wilcut said. Last month, Southwest added 12 flights to New Orleans during carnival season, anticipating the demand.

Hotel room occupancy for Mardi Gras 2008 is about on par with that of 2003, 2004 and 2005, the three years before Hurricane Katrina. To be sure, those were considered light years compared with the boom years of the 1990s, when hotel occupancy percentages were in the upper 90s. Also, there still are about 7,000 fewer available hotel rooms than before the storm.

“It’s not as big as 2005 or before,” said Colin O’Neill, a manager at Herbsaint Bar and Restaurant on St. Charles Avenue, which offers its patrons access to private viewing stands during Mardi Gras. “But this year, so far, is pretty good.”

This year also could provide the first true post-Katrina measure of leisure tourism to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, because it will be the first time actual tourism traffic is not obscured by hurricane-related travel.

In 2006, the first Mardi Gras after the storm, 40 percent of the city’s hotel rooms were occupied by public safety and hospital personnel, recovery workers and evacuees. Hotel occupancy was about 90 percent that year during Mardi Gras. Nearly 10 percent of the visitors in town then said the reason they were here was “hurricane-related,” according to a study by the University of New Orleans. Last year, considerably fewer people — about 1 percent — gave that as the reason for their visit.

That number will likely fall again this year as more time passes since Hurricane Katrina and recovery workers and volunteer groups visit the city in smaller numbers, said Janet Speyrer, associate dean for research and professor of economics at the University of New Orleans.

On top of that, the number of journalists in town covering Mardi Gras, roughly 1,500 in 2006, also has fallen.