Pow Wow: The latest buzz on nationwide travel

Shop talk: L.A.’s International Pow Wow hosts hundreds of travel reps this week.

By Mark Chesnut

More than 1,000 U.S. travel organizations and nearly 1,200 foreign travel companies, tour operators and other industry insiders are wandering around Los Angeles this week for International Pow Wow, the U.S. Travel Association’s big annual tourism conference. And while the focus is on selling the good old USA to travelers from other countries, the event — which takes place at the Los Angeles Convention Center — always produces worthwhile news of interest to any traveler.

News from the Windy City and Sin City were among the topics on the tongues of Pow Wow delegates this week:

• The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority announced that the destination attracted 38.9 million visitors in 2011, the second-highest visitor total in history. As always, there was hotel news from Sin City as well: The Bellagio has completed a $70 million renovation to all of its 2,568 guest rooms, while Circus Circus Las Vegas has upgraded the 1,900 rooms in its Casino and Skyrise Towers and added a 10,000-square-foot “Chuck Jones Experience,” an exhibit of the famed animator’s work. House of Blues Las Vegas, meanwhile, is gearing up for a two-year run of “An Intimate Evening with Santana: Greatest Hits Live — Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow,” located at the Mandalay Bay Hotel. The performances by Carlos Santana begin in May.

• Chicago’s Mayor, Rahm Emanuel, has launched a new tourism organization for his city, with the goal of attracting 50 million visitors per year by 2020. He also plans on opening Chicago tourism offices in Brazil, Germany and Japan. Among the newest hotels in the Windy City are the PUBLIC Chicago, a 285-room boutique hotel, the Radisson Blu Aqua, a design-inspired hotel that opened in November, and the Hotel Lincoln, a 184-room Joie de Vivre property that debuted in February.

• Pow Wow’s host city, Los Angeles, reported the largest number of visitors and spending in the city’s history for 2011, with a total of some 26.9 million people visiting last year. Fresh hotel options include the Hotel Bel-Air, which re-opened in October after 24 months of refurbishing, and the Hotel Wilshire, a 74-room boutique hotel that opened in September 2011.

Related resources

• Chicago hotels
• Las Vegas hotels
• Los Angeles hotels

Mark Chesnut is a travel writer, editor and publisher of LatinFlyer.com, which focuses on travel to Latin America. He serves as the on-site reporter for the Pow Wow Daily publication.

Tagged: California, Hotels, Las Vegas, Midwest