Pizza vendors overcome war concerns for LV expo

Thursday, March 27, 2003 | 11:12 a.m.

While his colleagues were busy trading addresses and developing business contacts Wednesday at this week's International Pizza Expo in Las Vegas, Vartan Megerdichian's mind was thousands of miles away in Baghdad.

Megerdichian works with Goglanian Bakeries Inc., Santa Ana, Calif., and is attending the three-day trade show sponsored by the National Association of Pizzeria Operators. The event wraps up today at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

While Megerdichian prepared pizzas using Goglanian crusts on the trade show floor to tempt potential buyers, he thought about what could be happening to cousins, aunts and uncles in his native Iraq.

A resident of Santa Ana since 1983, Megerdichian said it was his father who helped him to move to the United States. With tears in his eyes, he described how his father died in an Iraqi prison 10 years ago at the hands of Saddam Hussein's regime.

His mother safely moved to the United States six years ago, but he's worried about what could be happening to family members in his old home. He said he had serious concerns about coming to Las Vegas for a convention while bombs were falling in Iraq.

"When I'm finished here, I'll go over to my room at the Aladdin with my wife and we'll watch CNN," Megerdichian said. "I'm a Christian and I just pray nothing happens to my family."

Megerdichian wasn't the only employee at the Goglanian booth that had misgivings about coming to Las Vegas for this year's Pizza Expo.

Mari See was at a trade show in the same building at the Las Vegas Convention Center, showing off Goglanian products, when the unthinkable occurred. It was Sept. 11, 2001.

The International Baking Expo she was attending was canceled in mid-show when terrorists crashed four jet airliners into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Washington and in rural Pennsylvania that morning.

See, who resides in Bentonville, Ark., and sells Goglanian's breads and crusts to Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores, was stranded in Las Vegas for four days when the nation's airports were closed. She eventually got a ride to Los Angeles and made her way back to Arkansas on alternate flights that eventually started back up.

"I have to tell you, I was very reluctant to come here for this show," See said. "When it was obvious that the war was going to happen, we were wondering whether they were even going to have it. But look around. You don't see any people who are scared."

See was right.

Organizers of the International Pizza Expo said they were nervous about whether the show was going to come off a week ago when President Bush was delivering deadline ultimatums to Iraq and would-be show delegates were on the phone to Pizza Today, the Louisville, Ky.-based official publication of the association, wondering whether to come to Las Vegas.

"People were calling us and asking, 'What are we supposed to do?' " said Meredith Johnston, associated editor of Pizza Today. "We ended up deciding that in a business like this, you can't cancel it. In this economy, we needed to have the show."

Show organizers are glad they decided to press ahead. Johnston said between 5,000 and 6,000 people are attending the show, the best turnout for the Pizza Expo since Sept. 11, but far from the number that came in the show's best days in the 1990s, when it had fewer competitive events siphoning off attendance.

See's theory is that there are far more security officers in place to keep things safe -- maybe even a few operating under cover in street clothes. The high level of security reduces fear among the delegates, she said.

"What's to be afraid of?" asked exhibitor Dick Kay of Lindsay Olives, Lafayette, Calif. "I've been busy all day long. There are some people who are afraid to fly, but we'd have some of them even if there wasn't a war."

A pair of exhibitors from Pendleton Flour Mills LLC, Pendleton, Ore., said they were ready to come to Las Vegas regardless of whether the war was raging.

"If the airports would have been closed, we would have driven," said Gene Erhardt, general sales manager of Pendleton, another exhibitor that attended the ill-fated International Baking Expo and had to drive home right after the Sept. 11 shutdown.

"It's such a competitive business that for an important show like this, we have to be here are we may lose ground to a rival," said Mark Soblom, senior director of business development for Pendleton.

Rob Powers, a spokesman for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, said Wednesday that he thinks the gung-ho attitude exhibited by the Pizza Expo organizers and exhibitors is being taken at other upcoming trade shows and conferences.

Powers said there have been no convention cancellations reported to the LVCVA. Meanwhile, the Las Vegas tourism industry got another piece of no-cancellation news this week that bodes well for the shaky international market.

Japan Airlines, which operates three direct flights a week between Tokyo and Las Vegas, announced a series of operational cuts on international routes for April and Las Vegas was spared.

A spokeswoman for JAL cautioned that the company could make further adjustments on flight schedules for May and beyond if the war in Iraq drags on.

"As long as the conflict continues, we'll continue to look at all international routes," said spokeswoman Carol Anderson. "The routes that were announced were the ones we really needed to make adjustments on. Because Las Vegas didn't make that list, I think it would be safe to assume that the company is satisfied with the loads we've been getting on that route."

The other air carrier with a nonstop route to Asia from McCarran International Airport, Singapore Airlines, last week announced a two-month suspension of its twice-a-week flights between Las Vegas and Hong Kong beginning April 7.

Powers said events at the Las Vegas Convention Center this week have had good attendance. In addition to the Pizza Expo, the Convention Center has played host to the Nightclub & Bar Convention and Trade Show, Amusement Showcase International and the Travel Goods Show this week and the National Automatic Merchandising Association show opens today.

March and April are two of the strongest convention months on the annual calendar.

The biggest convention on the horizon is early April's National Association of Broadcasters event, which brings more than 110,000 people to Las Vegas and is one of the city's top five shows by attendance.

Powers said the war hasn't put a dent in NAB's advance registrations.

Las Vegas received another shot in the arm this week from trade show planners who chose the city to host the first-ever ISP Exchange Oct. 28-29 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center.

The event will be produced by ISP-Market LLC, Walnut Creek, Calif.; I$P Report, Boulder, Colo.; and Shorecliff Communications LLC, a San Juan Capistrano, Calif.-based subsidiary of Landmark Communications Inc., Norfolk, Va. Landmark, a multimedia company, owns KLAS-TV, the CBS affiliate for LasVegas.

The consortium that is bringing in the ISP Exchange, which is expected to draw 500 people and between 30 and 60 exhibitors in its first year, also announced that it is returning its Tower Summit and Trade Show back to Las Vegas after a one-year stop in New Orleans.

That event, which serves the wireless communications industry, will be conducted at the same as the new show for Internet service providers.

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