Experts Available: The Sept. 11 Terrorist Attacks and Their Impact on Travel and Tourism; Transportation, Communication and Financial Networks

Sept. 20, 2001

AMHERST, Mass. - The following University of Massachusetts faculty members are available to discuss various aspects of how the recent terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., are changing attitudes, business and economic practices, and having an impact on key economic and financial networks. Reporters are encouraged to contact them directly.

Tourism and travelin the Northeast and across the country
Frank P. Lattuca, 413/545-4047or lattuca@hrta.umass.edu

Lattuca, who chairs the UMass department of hotel, restaurant, and travel administration, says 27.5 million square feet of office space and 1,379 hotel rooms are believed destroyed or damaged in lower Manhattan. In Las Vegas, hotel-room prices have been slashed by 20 percent and occupancy rates are 50 percent, down from the usual 94 percent. "Meetings and conventions expected to draw thousands of people are being cancelled nationwide, a trend analysts say may drain billions more dollars from the travel industry already ailing from last week’s attacks," Lattuca says. "This trend is most apparent in New York, Boston, and Washington, D.C."

Transportation, logistical, communication, and financial networks
Anna Nagurney, nagurney@gbfin.umass.edu

Nagurney is John F. Smith Memorial Professor at the Isenberg School of Management, and the author or co-author of seven books on networks, including the forthcoming "Supernetworks: Decision-Making in The Information Age." She is an expert on transportation and logistical networks, communication networks, and financial networks, and the role they play in the networked economy. She can discuss the possible impacts of the attacks on the nation’s network infrastructure from a business perspective and, in particular,how transportation, affected. She can discuss how decision-making by both firms and consumers may now be changed. Nagurney can also discuss network redesign, reliability, and the operational impact of abrupt network disruptions.

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