L.A. Group in Bid to Boost Japan’s Travel to Southland

Even though economic storm clouds continue to darken over Japan, a delegation of Los Angeles tourism and city officials are scheduled to travel there today in a bid to revive sluggish Japanese tourism to Southern California.

As it stands, the drop in the number of visitors from Japan this year is expected to cost the region’s economy $600 million, experts say.

Plans for the trip were made in April, before Japan’s financial woes reached crisis level. But Patti MacJennett, head of tourism marketing for the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau, said Thursday that short-term prospects for boosting Japanese travel to Southern California are good.

“Certainly Japanese are still traveling and it’s our job to do what we can to capture as large a share of those people as possible,” said MacJennett, part of the eight-person delegation that is scheduled to meet with scores of Japanese tour company and airline officials during the weeklong trip.

The delegation especially plans to promote new attractions--such as the Getty Center and the Japanese American National Museum--that tourists visiting even as recently as last year would not have seen.

Japan is Southern California’s No. 1 source of foreign tourists, but the number of Japanese tourists has been in steady decline since the onset of the Asian economic crisis last year. The drop is being felt throughout Southern California, and tourism-driven businesses such as hotels are particularly hard-hit. Japanese bookings at the Omni Los Angeles Hotel & Center, for example, are half of what they were a year ago, said Omni General Manager John Stoddard, who is part of the delegation traveling to Japan.

Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp., estimated that 60,000 fewer Japanese tourists will visit Southern California this year, costing the region’s economy about $600 million. And those that do come, he said, will probably spend less.

“If we did not have the Asian crisis, we would have had a barn-burning year in the tourism industry,” Kyser said. “[Japanese tourists] spend more than almost any other type of tourist coming to Southern California.”

Meanwhile, competition for Japan’s remaining travel business is intense, MacJennett said. Tourism offices in Australia and Britain have been lobbying hard, and Los Angeles officials intend to do the same.

Despite Japan’s current economic problems, MacJennett said the delegation’s visit was not badly timed.

“Marketing Los Angeles, particularly overseas, is a long-term strategy,” MacJennett said. “The Japanese economy has proven to be resilient in the past and we expect it to be so again.”

The Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau opened a Tokyo office in April and a principle reason for the one-week trip is to formally introduce Hiroshi Sawabe, a 20-year veteran of the Japanese tourism industry, as director of the office, MacJennett said.

The delegation plans to visit three Japanese cities--Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka--and members are scheduled to call upon 20 of the top Japanese tour operators, said Stephanie Bradfield, a Visitors Bureau spokeswoman.