Mohave Daily News: Business

LAS VEGAS - Las Vegas tourism officials will reveal Tuesday a roadmap that outlines a strategy over the next three years to attract visitors from other countries who have shied away from the United States since the 9/11 attacks.

Part of the campaign involves targeting Hispanics in a Spanish-language version of the ‘‘What Happens Here, Stays Here'' television ads, which began running domestically and in Mexico in May.

In one of the series of ads, a guy and his girlfriend are in a long-distance telephone chat on their beds. Neither wants to hang up, but when she finally relents, the camera reveals she is with girlfriends in a Las Vegas hotel room and just getting ready to go out.

The piece ends with the tag line in Spanish: ‘‘Lo que pasa aqui, se queda aqui.''

Tourism officials said the message of promoting Las Vegas as a place of ‘‘adult freedom,'' where you can do things you can't or wouldn't at home, has resonated well with Mexican focus groups.

‘‘That kind of story was very acceptable,'' said Rob Dondero, executive vice president of R&R Partners, the firm that created the ads.

‘‘The second spot we have in Mexico is a guy who just comes back from his trip to Las Vegas and he's sitting down with his buddies in the cantina, and they all want to know details of what he did and he gets halfway through the story and he decides, ‘I can't tell the rest,''' Dondero said. ‘‘And they're left hanging. That was also something they understood very well.''

Officials are to present the vision to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority board on Tuesday.

Tourism officials are also targeting the United Kingdom as the third largest source of out-of-country visitors, following No. 2 Mexico and No. 1 Canada. Canadians, who watch American television, will get no special marketing campaign, but the ‘‘What Happens Here, Stays Here'' message is being tailored to ‘‘British humor'' for the U.K. market and is in focus group testing now in London, Dondero said.

The authority is aiming to boost the share of visitors who come from abroad to 15 percent, up from the current 13 percent, by 2010. The destination's percentage of visitors from abroad have fallen from 18 percent before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, buffeted by tougher visa restrictions, wariness of travel and customs checks.