NEW ORLEANS – In honor of the fourth annual Global Meetings Industry Day (GMID), New Orleans & Company hosted a Tourism Leadership Luncheon on Thursday, April 4, at the Hyatt Regency New Orleans. Governor John Bel Edwards, the event’s keynote speaker, and Lieutenant Governor Billy Nungesser stood behind the tourism and hospitality industry in solidarity, as it is the largest industry in New Orleans’s economy. Details were shared in a press release.
Additionally, Senator J. P. Morell, Representative Cameron Henry and Representative Walt Leger III received this year’s “Friends of the Industry¨ awards, and Senator John Alario received the Lifetime Achievement Award. This year’s Kabacoff Award was dedicated to Dick Brennan and Ella Brennan, whose family accepted on their behalf.
The New Orleans tourism industry joins more than 200 cities across 41 countries today to celebrate the impact of meetings and conventions on the city. In New Orleans, tourism is the primary economic driver and employer providing more than 89,000 jobs and is a significant contributor to the city’s operating budget. In 2018 alone, New Orleans hosted more than 1,200 conventions with an estimated 1.4 million attendees.
“At this year’s Tourism Leadership Luncheon, we are proud to join our members and partners to showcase the power of tourism. New Orleans & Company works tirelessly to secure meetings in the city, which bring business travelers to fill our hotel rooms and meeting spaces, utilize our airport, dine in our restaurants, and have team outings and events at our attractions,” said Stephen Perry, president and CEO of New Orleans & Company. “We will continue to showcase how unique our New Orleans meetings and events are to ensure tourism’s economic impact stays strong.”
Global Meetings Industry Day shines a light on the real impact meetings have on people, businesses and the economy. Led by the Meetings Mean Business Coalition, it brings together meetings industry advocates across six continents to tout the importance of the meetings and convention industry. New research from Oxford Economics affirms that face-to-face business meetings across 180 countries contributed $1.5 trillion of GDP in 2017 – more than the economies of Australia, Spain, Mexico, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia. The research also shows that meetings support 25.9 million jobs worldwide.
