Lieutenant Governor Mitch Landrieu Delivers Keynote Speech at Louisiana Travel and Tourism Summit January 14, 2004.

Business Editors/Political Writers

BATON ROUGE, La.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 14, 2004

Lieutenant Governor Mitch Landrieu 

Louisiana Travel and Tourism Summit Keynote Speech 

January 14, 2004

Note to Editors:

The following speech was delivered by Lieutenant Governor Mitch Landrieu as the keynote speech at the opening of the Louisiana Travel and Tourism Summit, the annual conference for the travel industry in the state. This is his first major speech since his inauguration on Monday, January 12.

The speech follows.

It's great to be here with you today. I am thrilled to have the honor to serve you and the people of the state of Louisiana. Everything that we do in the next four years, every step that we take, every decision we make, should be designed to achieve the following goal: to make Louisiana not only a great to visit, but a great place to live, to work and to play. That is our goal. That is our mission. And everything that we do, from north to south, from east to west, whichever way you want to put this state together, as a team, building an organization in principles and models from the ground up should be our design to achieve that goal.

The organization that I am a part of, the Lieutenant Governor's office and the Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, will be looking forward to achieving that goal. I obviously cannot do that by myself. I'm going to tell you who two people are who are going to help guide this organizational model, and we'll announce the rest of the team later in the week.

Ms. Angele Davis is going to be the new Secretary of Culture, Recreation and Tourism. The thing that you notice first when you meet Angele is her keen intellect, her organizational ability and her willingness to do what is necessary to make sure that government works very well. This young lady was recruited from the private sector and worked in the Foster administration as the Deputy Commissioner of Administration. That is the person who understands perhaps better than anybody in state government the nuts and bolts about how organizational structures partner with each other to create an integrated delivery system for the people of this state.

That is of critical importance to me now as Lieutenant Governor, and for the past 16 years it was critical to me as a state representative to find a way to make sure that government, and its purpose, is to help leverage assets and to be responsive, to be fully integrated and to be entrepreneurial and to be flexible and to be quick. Angele understands that better than anybody I know and I think she is going to be a tremendous Secretary of Culture Recreation and Tourism. I am very happy you said yes.

A very important person who is going to run the Lieutenant Governor's office is the Chief of Staff, and his name is Mr. Scott Shalett. I've known Scott's credentials perhaps longer than anyone in the room. He is a young man of keen intellect, he has great organizational and people skills, he has a great strategic mind, and he is going to be wonderful in guiding the cooperation and the partnership between the Lieutenant Governor's office and the Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism.

I'm honored that you're with us and that you chose to serve. Thank you very much.

Louisiana has to be a place where people want to visit, live, work, and play. Tourism, economic development, recreation, arts, music, film, state parks, museums, eco-tourism, wetlands - have I said anything somebody in this room is not involved in yet? It's all tied together as one. But to understand how we're going to get from where we are to where we want to go, it's really important, at least to me, to understand where we exist in time, and where we exist in place.

Think about where we are in time. In 1812 our first governor was sworn in. In the 192 years that have passed, we've had 61 governors. We're now into our 62nd. It happens to be somebody we all know very well and love, somebody who helped bring the tourism industry to where it is today. She's going to be a great governor, she's going to be a great asset for what it is that we're trying to do, and we offer her our congratulations again today.

We are not very old - 192 years since our first governor is not a long time ago. This area was first explored 320 years ago. To give you a sense of proportion, when I was in Great Britain last year, I was attending a cocktail party at a castle on a manor. And I asked the lady of the house, "How long have you been living here?" She said, "Me or my family?" And I said, "Whatever." She said "800 years." I said, "Really, who's your neighbor?" She said, "Those are the McIntires, we don't like them. We've been fighting with them for 800 years and we still don't like them." To give you a sense of how young we really are in America, it's important to know where we are at this place in time so as we stand on the shoulders of history, leaning forward into the 21st century.

What are we about? Where do we come from, where are we going? Is it true that Louisiana has always had statistics that put us at the bottom of all the good things and at the top of all the bad things? The answer to that question is no. At one time, in the infancy of our history, this particular region of the country was at the forefront of economic development initiatives with the mighty Mississippi River being the lifeblood of that economy.

And if we know that, is there a reason to believe that we can't be that way again? This is the importance of understanding where we happen to be right now. It's also critical to understand where we are in place: sitting at the deepest of the deep South, once this nation's backwater.

The other day I said the South is this nation's rumbling river of hope and opportunity. Is this just nice rhetoric, or is it the truth? Where are we today in terms of our relationship with the Northeast, and the West, and the heart, they say, of the nation?

They may be the heart, but the new South is a place where diversity is a strength, a place that understands that regional cooperation is necessary, a place that understands that knowledge, partnerships between the private and public sector and universities, information technology is the currency of a new economy.

That is the thing that is going to get us from where we are today to where we want to be. But we can't get there unless we have a sense of where we are in time, where we are in place. The fact of the matter is that the New South: Texas, we'll let them in. They have a President, so we need them. Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Florida, all of that - if you look at a map from way up high, it looks like a dot.

As we think about Shreveport versus Lake Charles, Baton Rouge versus Lafayette, Monroe versus Alexandria, you might want to think about the fact that when somebody's up here looking down, you're indistinguishable to them. And not only is the state of Louisiana and all of its parts indistinguishable, but the entire Southern part of the country is indistinguishable.

So if you ask yourself where are we in place, from a tourism perspective or a historical perspective, you're in the same spot that Georgia is, or that Arkansas is. And if you ask yourself, Who are we and who are we competing against, and you identify yourself that way, you can only imagine the partnerships that you're going to need in order to compete.

A month ago I was sitting in the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau office and our UK rep was there. I said, "Tell me a little bit about what you're telling people about the state of Louisiana." She said, "Well, I talk about the state of Louisiana but I really talk about the entire Southern part of the country." And I said, "Wait a minute, we pay you, why are you not talking about us?" She said, "Let me teach you something about what you're about to do.

"When there is an international tourist who is coming to this part of the world, what they're thinking about is are they coming to the South, or are they going to the Northeast, or are they going to the Chicago area, or are they going to Los Angeles, or are they going to Canada?" And I was thinking a little bit more parochially than that. At that point in time she started me thinking about asking ourselves, who are we competing against, and what do we want to be?

Do we see ourselves as looking for somebody from across the street to come and stay for an extra day, or are we looking to be an international destination? My friends, I believe Louisiana can compete and become an international destination. I believe that when we're trying to position ourselves, we really ought to see ourselves as a global economy. And we ought to be a point of destination just like New York is, or Canada is, or France is, or Italy. It is this state that stands above any state in the nation with rich cultural assets that are real, that are authentic, that fall right into line with the concept of cultural tourism. That gives us the greatest opportunity to succeed if we can only get ourselves together and focus on it. So then I ask you again, Who are we? As we stand here in this tourism summit, are we just Tourism? Are we just State Parks? Are we just Cultural Development? Are we just Museums? Are we just Eco-tourism? Staying within our own disciplines, in our own boxes, working in isolation, not partnering, not leveraging, not talking to each other, not thinking about how one feeds off of the next?

Not being able to leverage legislative support because someone might be talking to someone about State Parks and their friend down the street at the CVB might not know they're talking to the same person, or might not know that funding for the whole department helps everybody else? How much stronger and better could we be if everybody in this organizational structure, looking at ourselves in the broad context, would understand how to partner and come together?

Last week I was in Lafayette with their Convention and Tourist Commission Executive Director Gerald Breaux. Sitting at the table: economic development, the arts, the film industry, historic tax credits folks, historic preservation, Main Street folks, all coming together to do what? To create a great liveable space in that area. Synergy. Figuring out partners. Leveraging, understanding what other people are doing and bringing together more strength and more vision so that we can accomplish the goal. To do what? Not just to bring people into this state.

Tourism is an economic development industry. The hospitality industry in this state, in my opinion at this point in time, is doing a fantastic job. But the opportunities are much greater. The opportunities are much stronger. Because if we can communicate with each other, if we can create that fully-integrated, seamless sense of organization between and amongst all of the different and various parts, you can only think about what the possibilities might be.

When we say we are the number two industry in the state, that is true. We are. It did not happen by accident. But let me ask you this: Why shouldn't it be the first, and the biggest, and the best? I think it can be.

So as we think and move and work through getting to know each other better and getting to understand each other better, I would challenge you today to do a couple of things: Lay the groundwork today and make the sacrifices, not for five years from now or ten years from now or twenty-five years from now, but one hundred years from now.

Ask yourself the question, Yes, I understand that my expertise is in tourism, but how does that fit into the bigger picture of what Governor Blanco is hoping to do with the state in the next eight years. Is health care an issue for me? Is education an issue for me? Is anything else they might be thinking about an issue for me, putting economic development and that piece aside?

Let me tell you a little story. I was at a wonderful restaurant out on the balcony overlooking the street in downtown New Orleans, and no one was there except the young man who was behind the counter serving drinks.

I engaged him in a discussion. I said, "How are you doing?" He said, "I'm doing okay." I said, "How's work?" He said, "Work's great, I love my job, but I don't think I can keep doing it." I said "Why, you don't like working in the hospitality industry?" He said, "I do like it, but I can't afford to send my kids to private schools, and the public schools are not where I want them to be."

So I learned something new that day, that I hadn't thought about before. That education, and the importance of education has a lot to do with the availability of workforce, which is a critical issue to the hospitality industry. It's something that this industry and its leaders should think about. So I ask you, when there's a School Board meeting or there's a BESE Board meeting or there's an issue dealing with education in the legislature, does it occur to you that that's something we should be concerned about? Not only for your own personal needs and for your own children, but for making sure we have a workforce for the hospitality industry and the tourism industry that makes sense.

Couple of weeks ago I was at the port, I was in Lake Charles, I was in New Orleans, talking to leaders of the cruise ship industry. The cruise ship industry, as you know, is something Governor Blanco's office had a lot to do with creating. They did a wonderful job at it. There is now a new synergy that has been created, for the first time in a long time in this state, between the ports and the tourism industry.

Ports used to be just for containers. Ports weren't for people. But somebody thought for themselves, I don't want to do it the old way, I want to do it the new way. And something else happened at that time.

Somebody down the street had a couple of museums they had opened up, in an area where historic tax credits were used to create a new neighborhood. And in the city of New Orleans, all of a sudden you have the Ogden Museum of Art, you have the National D-Day Museum, you have Artists' Row, and it just happens to be four or five blocks from the river. And cruise ships discovered in partnership with the port that came up with a new idea that the cruise ship industry can now call Louisiana its home. That happened because people were thinking differently. That happened because they were thinking outside of the box. What happened was, somebody said, we can do it differently. And we should replicate that around the state, which leads us to another issue.

I'm looking at Stacy Brown, Executive Director of the Shreveport-Bossier Convention and Tourist Bureau, and I'm thinking about Shreveport, and I see Jill Kidder, who was the Executive Director of the Alexandria-Pineville Convention and Visitors Bureau, and I'm thinking about Alexandria. And the power of rivers, and water, to create that thing that bring people back to rural areas and urban areas and the partnerships we can have in order to create living space around what we call creative industries.

That's the way I want to start thinking about museums and art and cultural development. What does it mean in terms of having a product there you can stand there and look at and enjoy and be fulfilled, which is a wonderful goal. But how can you take museums and how can you take art and how can you take historic preservation and rivers and the natural assets of this state and turn it into something creative, a creative industry? There is a movement passing across this country that manifested itself first in New England and they probably do it better than anybody else, so we're going to go look there for best practices. It takes the concept of these things and adds value to them.

Think about that for a minute. Louisiana: great land, great water. Raw material: oil and gas, musical talent, artistry, everything that we have. What has our practice been in the last one hundred or so years? It has been to do not much but export that raw talent someplace else and let them add value to it and take oil and gas and turn it into something somewhere else, where the value is added and the high-paying jobs go.

Wouldn't it be wonderful in this state if we decided that as of today we're not exporting raw anything anywhere? That what we're going to do is keep our raw talent, whether it be in human capital, whether it be in cultural assets, whether it be in natural resources, and find a way to add value to it here and then export it to the rest of the nation, to the rest of the world, so we can say it was made here in Louisiana. That's a good idea. And that's something we should think about.

When somebody talks about airports, do you think, "That is something I need to be concerned about?" When somebody talks about roads, do you say, "That is something we need to be concerned about?" If you don't have a road, you can't move people from Point A to Point B. If you don't have adequate, coordinated air travel, you can't do that either. Have we thought as an industry about our participation in a master plan for Louisiana relating to air, water and land travel? We should think about that.

Because we do not, again, live in isolation. We live in partnership. And everything that goes on in state government, everything that goes on in city government, everything that touches the things that touch our industry, we have to be aware of, we have to think about.

We have to understand where we fit and we have to understand that if we don't participate, if we don't play, somebody else will set the rules for us, and we won't be able, from the ground up, to help design an industry for an organization or a series of practices that make sense for us.

So I challenge you today to go back home after you leave and think about ways you can create natural partnerships and know who your friends are who can help you achieve the things that should be achieved. When we're talking about things that are going to benefit the Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism and there's a piece of legislation just dealing with parks, I would hope that the folks from tourism are there to help out.

When we're dealing with something with tourism, I would hope that the folks from the state parks are there. When we're talking about retirement I would hope that everybody would be there. When we're talking about the arts, I want to bring the whole team to bear, to bring a creative, succinct vision and show the legislators and the rest of this state how they fit together for one purpose.

Because after all, we're not there for ourselves. We're there because we're going to commit ourselves to making sure, at the end of the day, Louisiana is a great place to visit, to live, to work, to play. We are part of a much larger family, and that is the rest of the legislature and the rest of the people in this state who are moving forward to try to improve health care, education, economic development, and all of the things that this next Governor, this next legislature, are going to deal with.

I want to be there, as the leader of this organization, to be able to come to the table to say, We are there to help. What can we do as a group? How do we fit in? How can we help?

I am really excited about getting to know each and every one of you personally. I am really excited about learning from you what you do, and how we can help you do your job. I am really excited about partnering with Governor Blanco to make sure that this great state lays the foundation for not the next four years or eight years but for the next twenty-five and a hundred years because after all, every one of you, whether you're in tourism or any other part, what you really want is for Louisiana to be a great place to live and raise your family. What you really want is for your children to be able to look at you and say, "I want to stay I want to stay here and work." You want to be able to say, "That sounds great, you go get 'em."

Or you want them to say to you, "I want to take what I learned and share it with New York, with California, with Paris, with Munich, with the rest of the world." And you want to be able to say, "Go girl. You do what you're going to do. But you make sure before you come home, you look somebody straight in the eye and you tell them, 'I was made in Louisiana.'"

Thank you very much.