Photos by David Sanders / Staff
Tents are being set up at Tucson Electric Park in anticipation of a huge influx of gem show dealers and visitors.

Edwin Bravo, owner of Edwin Bravo Minerals of Lima, Peru, arranges crates of minerals at the Days Inn, 222 S. Freeway.

Alan Matty helps set up a 32,000-square-foot tent near West Congress Street and Interstate 10. Christina Sterrenburg, left, John Hawk, Kellie Menard and Jessica Brockhuis sort out stacks of boxes. "For some people, it's a make-or-break deal in . . . the next month." Robert LaMaster Regional vice president for the Arizona Restaurant & Hospitality Association

A rush of gem and mineral enthusiasts from around the globe will descend on Tucson this week in an anticipated three-week burst of spending across the city.

Taxi drivers, restaurateurs, hoteliers and shop owners are hustling to prepare for the visitors, who in the past have come from 45 states and 21 countries to the annual Tucson Gem, Mineral and Fossil Showcase.

The 17 public gem and mineral shows - with staggered openings - start Thursday and run through Feb. 17. Some trade-only shows already are gearing up.

As thousands of international dealers and buyers arrive in Tucson - many with expensive tastes and fat wallets - Chef Janos Wilder will add foie gras, truffles and lobster to the menu at Janos, 3770 E. Sunrise Drive.

Cabbie Nan Harris will become a virtual Chamber of Commerce booster as she hands out tourism brochures from her taxi.

Restaurateur Suzana Dávila will welcome diners who reserved tables at her Cafe Poca Cosa, 88 E. Broadway, up to a year in advance.

Some entrepreneurs are looking to the shows this year to kick-start the tourist season, which has only sputtered so far for some businesses.

In the past, the carnivallike atmosphere has attracted nearly 50,000 gem show exhibitors, buyers and traders who network here and snap up gems and minerals hauled to Tucson from mines around the world. While here, the visitors spend an estimated $76.5 million for goods and services, making it the city's biggest revenue-generating tourism event of the year.

Some restaurant cash registers ring up more sales during the three weeks of the shows than they do in three months.

"For some people, it's a make-or-break deal in the course of the next month," said Robert LaMaster, regional vice president for the Arizona Restaurant & Hospitality Association.

At Seri Melaka restaurant, 6133 E. Broadway, "it's the best three weeks of the year" for sales, said Chris Yap. His family's restaurant happily tosses together Malaysian specialties not on the menu at a customer's request.

Similarly, Victor Chan will add 10 traditional Chinese dishes each day to his menu at Buffet King Restaurant, 5534 E. 22nd St., to please the palates of visitors from China and Taiwan.

Irene's Restaurant, 254 E. Congress St., usually Peruvian, goes German during the gem shows ever since German-speaking co-owner Charles Urbine met up with a squad of German mineral show traders several years ago and served them wine and bratwurst. The group comes back every year.

"These people know how to eat and drink," Urbine said.

At Janos, Wilder is buying ingredients from a computer database of taste preferences compiled from customers who have eaten at his restaurants during previous gem shows.

"We know their name, what they want to eat and drink and who they want to sit next to," Wilder said.

Many hoteliers also have marked February as their biggest month in revenues because of the show.

"The gem show is 20 percent of our revenue for the whole year," said Cal Maloney, general manager of the Pueblo Inn, 350 S. Freeway.

Some hotel executives this year, however, have reported a drop in bookings for the gem show, said Richard Vaughan, a vice president with the Metropolitan Tucson Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Hotel room sales could be off by 10 percent compared with last year, Vaughan said. He attributes the expected dent in revenues to the recession, which has caused companies to pull back on the number of buyers they send to Tucson.

Days Inn hotelier Raj Patel said a few international dealers with small operations from Japan, Sri Lanka and India had to cancel their reservations at the hotel, 222 S. Freeway, because they couldn't obtain visas after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

But most of the big exhibitors are expected to come back this year, officials said.

Several hotels have pulled out the stops for the visitors. In the competitive international hotel industry, tourism and hotel officials insist it's just good business sense to meet the needs of visitors with varying cultural, language and religious tradition needs.

"For cultural or religious things, we do everything we can to accommodate," said Kimberly Sundt, regional director of public relations at Loews Ventana Canyon Resort in the Foothills.

For example, resort employees - during the gem show and the rest of the year - press elevator buttons, open electronic door locks and flip on room lights for Orthodox Jews who visit on the Sabbath. Religious tradition prohibits them from touching anything electrical on that day.

Many big-city hotels provide menus, signs and television stations in different languages, said Mike Pina, a spokesman with the Travel Industry Association of America, a trade group in Washington, D.C.

"It's a hard line to walk," said Jason Mathis, a spokesman for the Salt Lake City Convention & Visitors Bureau, which is preparing for the Winter Olympics there.

In the days leading up to the games in Salt Lake City, he said, several Japanese spectators were steered to sushi restaurants, but they said they preferred to try American food like fried chicken and steak while they visited the United States.

For some international visitors, the best way to roll out the red carpet may be to treat them like locals.

Longtime mineral collector Jim Bleess, who has attended the annual gem and mineral shows since 1968, said many of his associates from around the world want to eat Mexican food when they're in Tucson.

"We have gem show regulars that come from all over," said George Shaar, co-owner of El Minuto Cafe, a Mexican restaurant at 354 S. Main Ave. "They eat here two and three times a day."

* Contact Jeannine Relly at 573-4213 or jrelly@azstarnet.com