From the looks of it Hollywood tourism is doing well or is it?

Musings. Having a day off in Hollywood while I wait for the PhoCusWright Conference to begin, I spent the day with my sister and my best friend (they're married) who coincidentally arrived in LA from Beijing last night on their way to Vancouver. We took a one hour tour of Hollywood, had lunch at a Mexican chicken fast food joint (el Pollo Loco) and visited LA Ink, the tatoo parlour famous for its sexy and intelligent star, Kat Von D. Last night we walked along Hollywood Boulevard which was hopping with young people and not so young people going to the various clubs and restaurants in the area. From the looks of it, you could not tell that this country and this state in particular are in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. What you can feel at the moment walking around Los Angeles is the particulate matter in the air caused by the devastating wild fires in various counties around LA. I had not been in LA since I lived here for a little while many many years ago. What struck me in a strange way is how different from Canadian cities it feels (I had not been in the US since 1998, I do most of my traveling in Canada, Mexico and a bit of Europe). It's not the architecture, or the weather or the traffic. There's just a different energy, hard to describe. Won't say better or worse, just very different.

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I will be blogging and twittering about the Travel Innovation Event, The PhoCusWright Bloggers Summit, the Center Stage, PhoCusWright's signature event starting tonight. Check the blog often and follow me on twitter at www.twitter.com/jaimehorwitz

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Cheers,

Jaime