The Tourism Business is Booming on the Bayou
Everyone loves to come to New Orleans, Mardi Gras, Jazz Fest, and
a state-of-the-art Convention Center all help make New Orleans one of
the top tourist and convention destinations in the country. New Orleans
has embraced its unique reputation as a southern city with a European
flair, and has spent millions attracting visitors and building new accomidations.
Those efforts have worked. Twice as many tourists visited New Orleans
in 1996 than just five years earlier. During the past 15 years, the
number of conventions and meetings in the city has grown an astonishing
200 percent. When the convention center's expansion is complete, New
Orleans will have the largest single-floor exhibition hall in the world,
making it a major contender for any national convention and allowing
it to host serveral conventions simultaneously.
Tourism is the key industry in this city, employing one out of every
six workers, 16,000 of whom work in the city's hotels. In fact, the
hospitality industry has brought in more dollars in terms of capital
investment than any other sector over the past five years.
New Orleans tops the charts for hospitality success
 The
nation's hospitality industry had the most successful and profitable
year in its history in 1996. "Earnings are bounding upwards and
the end isn't in sight," wrote Barron's magazine. New Orleans
did even better. New Orleans is one of the most profitable cities in
the country for the out-of-town hotel chains and financiers who invest
in the local hotel market. The cost of a night in a New Orleans hotel
rose 15 percent in 1996- the steepest price increase in the nation.
New Orleans hosts almost 12 million tourists andconventioneers annually
and they spendclose to $4 billion a year. There are more than 28,000
rooms to serve the deluge of visitors and these rooms stay full at a
higher rate than the national avage. At $105 per night, they are some
of the most expensive in the country- even thoughthe cost of doing business
in New Orleans is one of the lowest.New Orleans hotel rooms are the
most expensive in the South, easily out pricing Dallas, Atlanta, and
Orlando, all of which average about $80 a night. Even Miami rooms cost
only $92 per night.
Out-of-Towners take home the profit
The steady profitablity of the New Orleans market helps make it extremely
attractive to out-of -state chains, investors and developers. In fact,
mational hotel chains make up the largest ownership group in the New
Orleans market, and almost every national hotel chain has set up house
here.
The New Orleans properties are among their biggest moneymakers. The
New Orleans Hilton Riverside, for example, is a major revenue producer
for Hilton, consistently ranking among its top 10 properties in the
world. Six New Orleans hotels are ranked among the top 100 performers
nationally in terms of profit per room.
Even more hotels are in the works. In the past two years, 12 new hotels
have been built. Six more hotels are under construction and 16 are proposed.
Yet Hospitality workers in New Orleans are Barely Getting
By.
While New Orleans is a boom town for hotel owners and developers, it
ofers little hope to its hospitality workers who cannot pull their families
out of poverty, no matter how hard they work. The average hospitality
worker in New Orleans makes $15,500 a year. That figure, however, includes
the salaries of high-level managers who earn more than $80,000 a year.
A closer look at each job paints a more realistic-and
more shocking- picture. Full-time cooks in New Orleans earn wages 20
percent below the poverty level for a family of four, and kitchen and
food prep workers' wages are a stunning 37 percent below the poverty
level. Housekeepers are paid the least-on average, $11,400 a year, earning
41 percent less than what it would take to get a family out of poverty.
Banquet waiters' situation reflects this plight. For many years banquet
waiters, often African-American men, were able to make a middle-class
wage on which support a family, buy a house and even take an occasional
vacation. Their wages set the standard for the rest of the hospitality
workers.
That has changed. Today only 30 percent of banquet waiters can find
full-time work, making about $19,000 a year-half of what they
made as recently as a dacade ago in real wages. The other 70 percent
of banquet waiters work as "extras," often through one of the temporary
agencies. These waiters are doing well to make $12,000 a year, with
no benefits. In addition, banquet waiters today often don't earn tipe.
Convention Center customers, for example pay a 17 percent gratutity
charge, none of which ever goes to the banquet waitstaff.
"We really need a change where I work. We can't get
by on what we make in 40 hours a week. I'm always asking for more
overtime hours, even though I've got two children at home, just because
I really need the extra pay.
We just need more fairness."
Alba Ruiz
Housekeeper, Sheraton Hotel
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