Wednesday, August 31, 2005

New Orleans revisited

I spoke too quickly the other day. The scale of this disaster is hard to comprehend. Talk of reopening and rebuilding the city is being measured in months. Months. That's really, really hard to think about in today's day and age. All I can do is hope that the estimates are wrong. That the damage is somehow less than it looks. That some level of recovery is possible.
Almost everyone I talked to on the phones today (at the travel agency) wanted to talk about what's going on down there. Many of them had questions of what would happen to the city from a travel standpoint. Obviously, the tourist industry is broken to bits. Less obvious is what will happen going forward. The biggest danger to New Orleans recovery is no one will go there again. I fervently hope that as they rebuild, conventioneers and tourists will make special efforts to go there. New Orleans will need it.

No comments: