Mardi Gras Means Money in New Orleans

The city's tourism industry, getting back on its feet after Hurricane Katrina, is counting on a big weekend crowd to fill restaurants and hotels leading up to Fat Tuesday, or Mardi Gras, on Feb. 5.

The payday may be big for the hotels and restaurants hundreds of millions of dollars in a typical Carnival but for rank-and-file workers it's a chance to fatten the purse with the payoff from a healthy helping of hospitality.

At Rick's Cabaret in the French Quarter, income from tips could rise 30 percent over a typical weekend for Phoebe, who snaps up tips for her dances from a largely male crowd that wanders in to eat, drink and behold the charms of scantily clad women.

"You get a lot of people who ride in the parades who will come in, party, get loose, getting ready for their rides," said Phoebe, who for privacy reasons would only identify herself by her first name. "They're happy, in good spirits and income does go up."

Before Katrina, which struck in August 2005, the four-day run-up to Mardi Gras typically put up to 1 million people on parade routes and in the French Quarter. The annual pre-Lenten celebration was much curtailed in 2006 but rebounded last year. This year's early date for Mardi Gras could slim crowd expectations a bit because it comes before college spring breaks. Also, cold, rainy weather is a greater possibility.

Still, at least 90 percent of the metropolitan area's 32,000 hotel rooms are booked for the big weekend, said Mavis Early, executive director of Greater New Orleans Hotel and Lodging Association. Early said she expected the final bookings to reach 92 percent, the same figure as the 2006 celebration. Before Katrina, there were about 38,000 rooms in the region.

In New Orleans, 1,355 restaurants are open, about 72 percent of the 1,882 pre-Katrina establishments, said Tom Weatherly, a spokesman for the Louisiana Restaurant Association.

This year's Mardi Gras is part of a tourism bounty that included back-to-back college bowl games (the Sugar and BCS championship) in December and January at the Superdome. After Mardi Gras comes the NBA All-Star Game at the New Orleans Arena, major conventions that will bring up to 100,000 people to the city in March and April, and the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival from April 25 to May 4.

At Rick's, manager Charles Weber hopes a big Carnival season will add to "a good first quarter." He said that on a weekend or during a special event, a waitress can pull in up to $500 while entertainers can see $2,000 to $3,000.