New Orleans
Beyond the Bayou: Why new Orleans means business
WITH A GLOBAL CULINARY REPUTATION, WORLD-CLASS CONVENTION INFRASTRUCTURE, AND A STRATEGIC VISION THAT PUTS COMMUNITY AT ITS CORE, NEW ORLEANS IS MAKING A COMPELLING BUSINESS EVENTS CASE. IAIN STIRLING SPEAKS TO WALT LEGER, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF NEW ORLEANS & COMPANY, AND STEPHANIE TURNER, SENIOR VICE-PRESIDENT OF CONVENTION SALES AND STRATEGIES, ABOUT WHAT IS DRIVING THE CITY’ S MOMENTUM.
Business layered upon business New Orleans has long occupied a singular place in the imagination of travellers, but the city’ s leadership wants planners to see beyond the romance. Across a single recent weekend, the Ernest N. Morial Convention Centre hosted 10,000 Louisiana educators filling 7,000 hotel rooms. That event dovetailed with two other major activations running simultaneously: Sail 250, the tall ships bicentennial celebration marking America ' s 250th anniversary, and the second edition of North America ' s 50 Best Restaurants.
For Stephanie Turner, that kind of stacking is not an accident. It is an operating philosophy.“ Business layered upon business is very much our operating model. We are good at running multiple large-scale events simultaneously and ensuring that each one delivers at the level our clients expect,” she says.
That operational confidence is backed by hard infrastructure. The city’ s convention centre is one of the largest in the United States, and the surrounding River District is undergoing significant transformation with new office buildings rising alongside a new Omni Hotel, a Marriott AC property under construction, and the continued extension of the Golden Waldenburg Riverfront Park, which now offers approximately 2.5 miles of contiguous waterfront that Walt Leger describes as“ the city ' s front porch”.
Culinary prestige as a business events tool When North America’ s 50 Best Restaurants chose New Orleans as the stage for its second edition, it was a signal the city’ s food scene had moved firmly into the global conversation. Three New Orleans restaurants featured on the list: a modern Mexican restaurant, Dakar Nola; a Senegalese restaurant; and the reinvented Emeril’ s, where EJ Lagasse has joined his father to reimagine a New Orleans institution. For Leger, culinary prestige is not a niceto-have in the competition for business events: it is a conversion tool:“ When people hear New Orleans, they think food. We want that to be authentic and high-end – whether it is a couple going out to dinner or a conference buying out a restaurant.” The event also helped address one of the city’ s persistent challenges: perception. The assumption that New Orleans cuisine means only Cajun and Creole, Leger argues, undersells a scene that has evolved into something far more diverse and inventive. Getting the right audience into the city, whether it is corporate clients, luxury travellers, senior association executives, is the most effective way to close that gap.
Medical meetings: The bedrock of association business Beneath the headline activations, it is medical and healthcare meetings that form the durable foundation of New Orleans’ business events economy.
“ Medical meetings have been the foundational layer of our association business for decades,” says Leger.“ Those meetings signal very high
44 / CONFERENCE & MEETINGS WORLD / ISSUE 143