WASHINGTON, June 29 (Reuters) - The lucrative tourism industry in the Gulf of Mexico could be hard hit for years by the false perception that the largest oil spill in U.S. history has ruined all the beaches, tourism officials said on Tuesday.
"We have a real crisis going on, but you also have a perceptual crisis going on," said Roger Dow, president of the U.S. Travel Association.
"The perceptual crisis could end up being much more costly for us than the actual crisis once we get it under control," Dow said at a briefing to discuss the impact of the April 20 oil spill on the tourism industry in Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama.
Adam Sacks, managing director of Tourism Economics, said the Gulf of Mexico region was particularly vulnerable as the economies rely heavily on tourism.
He said visitors spend $94 billion a year in the four states combined and the tourism-related industry accounts for about 310,000 jobs in the Gulf region.
Tourism officials said they had launched advertising campaigns using social media and Web sites showing live webcams and date-stamped pictures to illustrate that it was still safe to travel to the region.
"For Florida the economic damage didn’t begin with the first sign of the oil," said Chris Thompson, president of Visit Florida, the state’s tourism marketing arm. "It began with the fear of the oil coming, which was way before we first had impact."
Thompson said uncertainty over the potential environmental impact is causing people to cancel trips to Florida, even if the area they had planned to visit has not even been impacted by the massive oil spill.
"This uncertainty that we’re looking at is what’s wreaking havoc on our economy in the state of Florida right now," said Thompson, who said travel cancellations are running about 75 percent in northwest Florida where oil has already been found on beaches.
But he said officials were quickly cleaning up any oil that had washed ashore and there were still hundreds of miles of untouched beaches in the state. "Right now as I speak, none of our beaches are closed and there are no swimming advisories."
In Mississippi cancellation rates are at 50 percent and recreational fishing and charter boating is down 90 percent, Sacks said.
