Local hotel operators, still reeling from the convention business lost in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, are scrambling to reschedule events, reduce room rates, provide free massages anything to draw customers.

There are indications from operators that the local hotel business has at least stabilized, though there was little way to quantify their observations and most were unwilling to provide specific numbers. Besides, the damage from last month will make it difficult, if not impossible, to recoup all the losses.

Prior to Sept. 11, the projected average occupancy rate for L.A. County hotels in September had been a respectable 72 percent, according to the Los Angeles Convention & Visitors Bureau.

But an informal survey of local hotels, conducted by the visitors’ bureau after Sept. 11, showed that the occupancy level will turn out to be somewhere between 50 and 55 percent.

The Los Angeles Convention Center, which has nearly 900,000 square feet of exhibition and meeting space, recently lost four events that were expected to generate a combined $1.2 million in rent and other fees. Much of that money will probably be lost for good, said Belu Onyedika, a spokesman for the convention center.

But it’s smaller venues that stand to lose the most.

At the Manhattan Beach Marriott, at least 16 events have been cancelled, each of which would have generated anywhere from $3,000 to $48,000 in revenues, said General Manager Robert Thomas. As of late last week, the hotel was still trying to reschedule events for sometime between December and February.

“They’re needing time to figure out exactly what posture their companies are going to take in terms of business travel and when their employees will feel comfortable traveling again,” Thomas said. “We’re just kind of taking it week by week. We don’t have any idea of when we expect to see the travel numbers where they were before Sept. 11.”

Trade shows, which require several months of planning and attract hundreds or thousands of exhibitors and attendees, are less subject to being changed than the conferences and seminars that fill hotel meeting rooms and banquet halls.

“The organizers of (large) events, in most cases, cannot afford not to conduct the events,” said Steven Hacker, president of the Dallas-based International Association for Exhibition Managers, which represents some 3,600 tradeshow and exposition managers. “Not doing it is the equivalent of closing Neiman Marcus for a year.”

Conferences are another story because they are smaller and often have a higher percentage of fly-in attendees, said Michael Hughes, director of research for Tradeshow Week, a local trade magazine.

Without paying exhibitors to worry about, organizers of countless conferences and seminars have been more willing to postpone their events and, if rooms are not available on the revised dates, they are more willing to change locations.

Such was the case for Fortune magazine, which recently pushed back its “Most Powerful Women in Business Summit,” originally set to be held Oct. 3-5 at the Ritz-Carlton Huntington Hotel & Spa. The event, which usually draws about 200 attendees, has been rescheduled for March and moved to a hotel in Palm Springs.

Fortune spokeswoman Carrie Welch said the location was moved for “logistical reasons,” and declined to elaborate.

As for the postponement, Welch explained that the event “is focusing on women and business. It seemed that maybe that topic needed to be pushed into the background a little, based on the topics that are obsessing us right now.”

Ritz-Carlton Huntington spokeswoman Deanne French said she “hates to use the word ‘cancellation.’ Many of the customers are going to be rebooking in November, December, January.”

The hotel would not release reservation or occupancy information, but with fewer people willing to board airplanes, the Ritz-Carlton Huntington has been trying to attract regional business with various perks.

While losing the Fortune event, the Ritz-Carlton Huntington gained a health care conference hosted by The Bond Buyer, a financial newspaper based in New York. That event originally had been set for Sept. 19-21 in San Francisco, but it was unable to reschedule at that venue before Thanksgiving. So The Bond Buyer moved its event to the Pasadena hotel, which had space available Nov. 14-16.

In searching for a new location, Heidi Greta said she found hotels willing to omit “attrition clauses” from booking contracts, which require event sponsors to partially cover the cost of rooms reserved but not used during a conference.

“That’s big because that’s usually the part that the meeting planner and the hotels spend the most time negotiating because they’re trying to limit their exposure and we’re trying to limit ours,” she said.

The Beverly Hilton Hotel has been offering reduced rates and making other concessions for “major-volume” accounts, said General Manager Greg Tinsley. The hotel has been able to rebook some larger groups, albeit on a smaller scale, for later in the year.

The rebookings tend to be smaller because fewer people are willing to travel.

Those who do hold conferences in L.A. in the coming weeks will probably end up spending less money, opting to keep parties and other fun frills off the schedule. In 2000, overnight travelers to L.A. County spent an all-time high of $13.6 billion, according to the visitors’ bureau.

Splurging on hospitality suites and trips to local tourist attractions might not seem appropriate for a while, said Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Economic Development Corp. of Los Angeles County. “You’re probably about six months away before the more fun stuff is acknowledged to be OK,” he said.

Kyser predicted that the recent slump could result in some 5,000 layoffs within the local hotel industry, which employs a workforce of 42,500.