Devastated houses, evacuees, confusion and a high death toll. Not exactly the sort of things usually associated with tourism. In states like Louisiana or Mississippi these things happened and the now booming tourist industry wants to erase these harsh memories from the mind of the visitors. Does is manage to succeed? "Well they actually did very well", John Doe webmaster of travelerpass comments, "because people are now coming back again. The reservations made online for this area are on a constant rise."

There aren't many ways to observe this travel market directly, except for the "wishful thinking" reports that the local authorities keep releasing, not until now. Travellerpass has an unique insight on this issue as it deals with all the needs that a typical tourist might have. "Obviously we cannot pretend that al the tourists in the United States use our service. Now that would be wishful thinking. But by comparing the evolution of the average interest shown by potential visitors through the usage of our site we can elaborate some statistical significant conclusions."

Of all the areas affected by hurricane Katrina, New Orleans seems to recover best. No other location has seen as much improvement in developing tourist attention and new hotels enter the circuit all the time. "The recent Mardi Gras that took place there was only a confirmation of what we knew for several months", John Doe continues, "New Orleans is once again the tourist capital of the South."

But New Orleans is just one of the these stories and not all of them boast success. Some traditional tourist areas have yet to recover. "In our case no news means bad news", the same John Doe adds, "The areas that do not register at least some moderate activity pretty much means that they are dead and I am not only about tourism here, businessmen travel too and many of them reserve their plane tickets and hotel rooms through our site. Their lack cannot do any good".

What will the future of the area look like? John Doe responds: "We honestly have no idea. We simply help travelers and can only give statistics towards the current situation. We don't like guesswork very much, we let the others do it."

The lucky part is that some of the famous areas including the French Quarter, Downtown Business District, Warehouse District and Garden District are located several feet above sea level on a crescent-shaped swath of land along the Mississippi River, which makes them escaped Katrina.