Talk about trying to make lemonade

Los Angeles convention officials Monday reacted to the news that E3, one of the city’s largest annual trade events, is planning to leave the Convention Center and downsize into smaller area hotels by mounting an all-out push to find replacement conventions.

In a memo sent to hotel general managers, L.A. Inc. President Mark Liberman said the departure of such a massive convention that draws 36,000 room nights each May is a big blow, but opens up the opportunity to get two or three convention commitments in its place.

“What is equally clear is that the absence of E3’s several weeks of move-in and out requirements now frees us to sell what is a very high demand period of the year during a time when the LA LIVE project is achieving new national attention,” Liberman said.

“As you might expect, sales calls are being made now to inform organizations who have expressed an interest in what had been the E3 time slot,” he added.

The letter came in response to the announcement earlier Monday from Doug Lowenstein, president of the Entertainment Software Association, that the organization is changing its business model. Rather than hold one massive annual convention for online and video game makers, the association believes it can better serve its members with several smaller meetings

“Over the years, it has become clear that we need a more intimate program, including higher quality, more personal dialogue with the worldwide media, developers, retailers and other key industry audiences,” Lowenstein said in the announcement.

While most of these smaller events would remain in Los Angeles at area hotels, Convention Center officials acknowledge that the downsizing would probably result in less overall room nights booked, which will translate into less overall tourist spending for the L.A. economy. That’s hardly a good sign when the city is trying to drum up interest in conventions as it plans a massive Convention Center hotel.

But Liberman said that E3’s long set up time (10 days) and move-out time (five days) has meant that the Convention Center has been off-limits for most of the month of May, despite the fact the E3 event itself only lasts about four days. May is widely considered one of the two or three prime months for conventions; because the Convention Center has been booked, officials there have had to turn away meeting planners seeking conventions in May.

Now, Liberman said, those opportunities have opened up. Also, he took pains to note in his letter that the Entertainment Software Association’s decision “is related specifically to the demands of its industry.”