LA Tourism's Latest Updates

Please read on for the latest from Los Angeles Tourism.

'Now Playing' Returns for Second Act

The next phase of #NowPlaying, our star-studded advertising campaign, launched early last week just in time to celebrate the Hollywood Sign's centennial and the 95th annual Oscars. The iconic Jenifer Lewis returns to narrate the vibrant ad, with an appearance from NBA All-Star and LA Clippers fan-favorite Paul George along with custom illustrations by renowned Mexican American artist and street art icon Mister Cartoon. The campaign opens with a captivating shot of the Hollywood Sign in its 100th year, following a group of friends visiting LA arts and entertainment highlights including the Walk of Fame, The Broad, The Music Center, and the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures featuring a cameo from an Oscars statuette. The campaign is slated to appear in traditional and digital marketing channels both in the U.S. and international markets including Australia, Canada, Mexico, and the United Kingdom. Watch the new spot here. 

India's Recovery Sparks Excitement for Los Angeles

Adam Burke, Don Skeoch, Kathy Smits, and Chris Heywood traveled to India last week to meet with key travel trade stakeholders, industry partners and media. The visit marked the first time our leadership team touched down in India after launching our full-time India office in 2019, joining Regional Director of India Seema Kadam to update stakeholders about all “LA 2.0” has to offer and gather valuable insight into travel trends in the vital Indian market. This was an important trip to make as this market is a vital piece of our long-term strategy given its incredible growth as one of the world’s largest emerging travel markets. In fact, we are now targeting 1 million Indian visitors to the City of Angels by 2030, with full recovery to pre-pandemic levels forecasted by 2024. During their trip, the team also interviewed candidates for a new Communications position to join Seema in the India office. Read more about the team's time in India and insights on upcoming Indian visitation in Adam’s interview with the Times of India. 

Beyond The Streets & LA Tourism Take London

The iconic street art of Los Angeles is on display across the pond for the Beyond The Streets London exhibit at the Saatchi Gallery. LA Tourism is a sponsor of the newly opened London exhibition, which is open until May 9. As part of the sponsorship, we hosted an exclusive press preview hour on Thursday February 16, welcoming 13 media guests to the Saatchi Gallery, including The Times and top UK freelancers. Guests had the chance to interview LA artists featured in the show, including Shepard Fairey and Estevan Oriole. Resulting coverage has already appeared across the BBC, with more stories to follow. Additionally, consumers, industry colleagues and trave trade were all invited to apply for tickets to an LA Morning, where the first 1,000 tickets to the exhibition were hosted free of charge. Each lucky winner was given an LA guidebook and a specially commissioned, limited-edition poster by Mister CARTOON, the same LA artist featured in our Now Playing campaign. Later in February, a fabulous prize of a trip to LA will be landing on social media to further promote Los Angeles to the UK audience.

Marriott International Sales & United Airlines Host DMC FAM

Our Global Tourism and Sales department collaborated in partnership with Marriott International Sales and United Airlines to host six US based Destination Management Companies (DMCs) from the Miami and New York regions to highlight all the new product and development in Los Angeles. Attendees were owners and senior leadership staff from DMCs who handle a mix of MICE/Incentives, leisure group and FITS for European, Domestic and Latin America markets. This FAM experience included site visits to SoFi Stadium, Universal Studios Hollywood, Warner Bros Studio Tour Hollywood, Griffith Observatory and Neue House Hollywood. During the FAM our team shared upcoming developments and major milestones in 2023 and an overview of LAX modernization project and timeline.

India 101: Cultural Competency Workshop

LA Tourism's sales team is gearing up to welcome the Asian American Hotel Owners Association (AAHOA) to the LA Convention Center for the annual AAHOACON, the largest gathering exclusively for hotel owners later this April. In preparation, we hosted a cultural immersion workshop that provided a deep dive into Indian culture. 
The workshop was presented by Seema Jain, Founder and CEO of Seva Global, who guided attendees through understanding the foundation and core values of the Indian culture, business etiquette, food, customs and much more.

Global Tourism Updates: 

• LA Tourism travels to San Diego for IITA: LA Tourism recently attended the International Inbound Travel Association's Summit (IITA) in San Diego from February 12-15. IITA is made up of a diverse group of inbound operators, DMOs and suppliers who are united on strengthening international inbound travel to the United States. The annual summit provides an excellent mix of informative education sessions (US Travel, State Dept, Sustainability, Travel Distribution) and panel discussions (Aviation Recovery and Future of Travel) with ample meeting opportunities to network with top tier international inbound operators.

  Los Angeles Tourism was mentioned throughout the conference from key speakers, including the Department of State on meeting/connecting with Los Angeles Tourism on visas; Stephanie Jones, CEO from Black Cultural Heritage Tours on partnering with Los Angeles Tourism and Starline Tours to create new Black Cultural tours in LA and Julie Coker, CEO from San Diego Tourism on unique initiative to address staffing shortages/issues.

• Vancouver Sales Calls & MIT Event: The LA Tourism Travel Trade team recently traveled to Vancouver, BC, one of LA’s top markets in Canada. The team conducted a market overview, held meetings with travel advisors and tour operators, and hosted two events, including an LA Insider client lunch, and a “Millennials in Travel (MIT) – Vancouver Chapter” networking reception.  The MIT event was attended by nearly 50 industry professional who learned what’s new in Los Angeles and "shopped" at a pop-up shop where guests could pick an LA give-away item of their choice. In addition, attendees were able to win great prizes, including a Trip to Los Angeles for two with airfare (sponsored by Air Canada), as well as great hotel stays, activities and tickets to Universal Studios Hollywood™.  

• Receptive Tour Operator Sales Calls and Training: The Global Tourism team recently conducted a series of in-person and virtual sales calls with local Receptive Tour Operators (RTOs) to share What’s New in Los Angeles in 2023. Los Angeles Tourism met with 10 RTOs who handle inbound travel from the Japanese, Korean, European & domestic markets, the operators include Ace Convention & Tour, American Tours International, American Ring Travel, ANA Sales America, Destination America, New World Travel, Onward, J-Pac Travel, JTB USA & TTA.

• Global Hotelbeds Marketing Collaboration: We recently launched a co-op campaign with Hotelbeds and Visit California as one of the 10 featured destinations. The B2B campaign will run from February 15 to August 15 and includes the following markets: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Mexico, UK and the US. The custom landing page features LA hotel product, activities, updated destination content and videos, like the Best Views of the Hollywood Sign, Dining in Los Angeles and more. The campaign can be viewed here.  

• Visit USA & Brand USA Australia & New Zealand Expos: LA Tourism's Australia office recently exhibited at the annual Visit USA B2B Expo that took place in Australia from Feb 20-23. The events in Brisbane, Melbourne & Sydney were attended by Kat Brown, LA Tourism's Travel Trade Manager, Asia Pacific, who provided updates on LA's new project to over 500 travel advisors.

• LAX B2B Campaign with American Airlines Sydney: To support the relaunch of American Airlines’ daily Sydney to LAX service LA Tourism’s Sydney office launched a national B2B sales incentive campaign for the Australian travel trade with trade partner Travel Junction. The campaign focused on driving sales of AA SYD-LAX airfares and member hotels. Running from Jan 16 – Feb 17 the campaign will reward the 5 top-selling travel agents with an LA FAM trip scheduled for March.

• Connecting with Media at IMM Australia: The Global Communications team’s Australia PR agency, Adhesive, joined Craig Gibbons at IMM Australia this month to  connect with key Australian and Kiwi media. With nearly 20 meetings with top freelancers, editors and reporters at publications spanning travel, news and consumer, the team shared about the many new offerings to discover in LA 2.0 generating strong interest in key moments including the Hollywood Sign centennial and the recently opened Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios Hollywood. 

• Visit California Australia Travel Associates FAM: Our team recently hosted four Australian travel advisors from Travel Associates in conjunction with Visit California for a three-night FAM. During their time in LA the group experienced a hotel stay at Short Stories Hotel, a VW Wine Tour from Malibu Wine Tours, lunch at Geoffrey’s Malibu, a Magic Castle dinner show experience, a visit to Universal Studios, and a Horseback Ride to Hollywood Sign.

• Korean Air LA 100 Campaign: LA Tourism’s Korean office has partnered with Korean Air to launch a consumer campaign to promote Seoul to LAX airfares. To capture consumer interest in travel to LA during the campaign running from February 16-March 31, a series of consumer social media promotions were launched that promoted LA’s Centennials and provided consumers with a chance to win prizes.

• Visit California Trade Seminar in Korea: LA Tourism’s Rep in Korea, Nahye Kim, participated in the Visit California Trade Seminar in Seoul on February 1. The event focused on the relaunch of Visit California’s online training platform, California STAR, and was attended by 50 top travel agents who were provided with destination updates from Californian cities, including Los Angeles. 

Dear Valued Tourism Partners,

As we kick off Women’s History Month, I’d like to take a moment to recognize the significant, ongoing contributions of so many remarkable women in our City of Angels – not just this month, but 365 days a year. 

I feel fortunate to learn from incredible women who inspire me every day - from our own LA Tourism team to countless Angelenas across every part of our community, and – above all - my amazing wife and daughter. 

As a destination that takes great pride in our diversity and inclusiveness, it’s also important to remember that Women’s History Month celebrates everyone in our community who identifies as female. 

While this month was declared to recognize the advancements and contributions of women in history and society, there is still much work to be done to reach gender equity. In fact, the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) include 14 key objectives under SDG number five to advance equality for women and girls around the world. You can learn more about the Gender Equality goal and what you can do to support it on The Global Goals website.

On a separate note, over the past month, several members of LA Tourism’s Executive Leadership Team and I have had the privilege of traveling throughout the Asia-Pacific region to continue promoting international tourism recovery in key markets.  

To kick things off, I traveled to India with CMO Don Skeoch, SVP of Global Tourism Development Kathy Smits, and SVP of Global Communications Chris Heywood to meet with key travel trade stakeholders, industry partners and media. The visit marked the first time we touched down in India since LA Tourism launched its full-time India office in 2019. We were joined by Regional Director of India Seema Kadam to update stakeholders about “LA 2.0” and to gather valuable insights into emerging travel trends. India has long been a key market for Los Angeles, and we are targeting one million Indian visitors to our City of Angels by 2030, with full recovery to pre-pandemic levels forecasted by 2024. 

From there, I had the opportunity to represent LA at the General Assembly of the World Tourism Alliance before heading to Beijing for meetings with the Chinese travel trade. In 2016, LA became the first US destination to welcome more than one million Chinese visitors in a year and – prior to the pandemic – China had grown to become our #1 overseas market, so this is a significant step forward in the recovery process. 

Next, we’re headed to Japan as part of a trade delegation with California Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis and Visit California, followed by a trip to South Korea to conduct consumer focus groups in this top five overseas market. While there, we will host a luncheon with key partners including airlines, travel trade media, the US Embassy, travel influencers and more. 

International guests' return remains critical for our local economic recovery and the nation’s. With each trip, I’m encouraged to see first-hand the tremendous pent-up demand for travel to the US and our City of Angels!

All my best, 

Adam Burke 
President & CEO 
Los Angeles Tourism

Featured Member: Get Your Guide

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New Members – February 2023
Welcome to our new Members! The following businesses joined our Membership in February 2023:

Reposite

The Delphi 

Unlimited Biking

Recent media coverage secured by our Global Communications team includes:

• The Times (UK): Where to see the best street are in the world
• Times of India (India): US expects surge in Indian visitors after visa woes ease
• Travel Weekly (US): Adam Burke of Los Angeles' tourism board on the return of Chinese travelers
• The Province (CAD): Lynx Air's inaugural flight to Los Angeles takes off from Calgary
• Karry On (AUS): Now Playing: LA Tourism presses play on global ad campaign's second phase