Reno is the eighth most popular U.S. destination for Asian-American travelers, beating out Seattle and Chicago but trailing larger cities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles, a national travel survey found.

Las Vegas ranked No. 1 for Asian-American and Hispanic travelers, and No. 8 among African-Americans in the Travel Industry Association of America survey.

“We are delighted that Reno is on that list,” said Bruce Bommarito, executive director of the Nevada Commission on Tourism and a TIAA board member. “The Asian-American community has a tendency — not everyone, of course — to favor gaming, and we’ve had recent discussions with certain Reno facilities about targeting Asian communities.”

Bommarito, a member of TIAA’s research committee, said Northern Nevada offers many other reasons to lure Asian-Americans.

“They also tend to like the Old West tourism, so it’s an easy sell with Virginia City and places like that,” he said.

Bommarito said Chinese and Chinese-American tour-ists to Nevada spend more than any other ethnic group, with Japanese tourists close behind.

Paul Byi, director of Asian gaming at the Silver Legacy Casino Resort in downtown Reno and a Chinese-American, said catering to the Asian community has been paying off since the resort opened in 1995.

“What we do, what we provide, are popular with Asians because they know they’ll be taken care of,” Byi said. “We treat them like family.”

That’s evident in the huge emphasis the Silver Legacy and other downtown properties (Circus Circus, Eldorado Hotel Casino and Harrah’s Reno) put on the Chinese New Year celebration, an eight-day affair starting Thursday.

Special Chinese buffets, concerts and a “Chinatown Grand Avenue” retail bazaar on the Silver Legacy’s casino floor are just a few of the annual efforts geared toward Chinese-Americans, the largest group of Asians who regularly visit Reno, Byi said.

“This doesn’t surprise us that the Asian visitors have put us in the Top 8,” said Silver Legacy General Manager Gary Carano. “They are such a huge part of our business.”

The four downtown properties also cosponsor the annual Chinese New Year parade in San Francisco, complete with a “Downtown Reno Welcomes You” banner over the main parade route and a float.

Lawrence Kwok, a director of casino marketing at the Silver Legacy, said Eldorado patriarch Don Carano and Harrah’s Entertainment Inc. Chairman Phil Satre are both honorary presidents of the San Francisco Chinese Chamber of Commerce.

“Minority groups in particular are very interested in areas that have a theme, a culture, a place where they come together,” said TIAA President William Norman.

The survey of 300,000 households found Asian-American travel volume increased 10 percent from 2000 to 2002, while Hispanic travel rose 20 percent. Travel among African-Americans, who put Atlanta in the top spot, increased 4 percent. Overall, U.S. travel grew about 2 percent during the same period.

Many of Northern Nevada’s casinos have Asian employees working as dealers, food service staff, hosts and bartenders — indispensable for Asian guests who speak different dialects of Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean and other languages, Gary Carano said.

“I myself like to gamble, and … I guess it’s in our culture, in our blood,” said Virginia Cuaresma, who emigrated from the Philippines to the United States in 1968 and moved to Reno in 1992. “I do notice a lot of Asians like to come here.”

Cuaresma was playing slots at the Atlantis Casino Resort early Wednesday evening.

Nearby was Angie Schuman, a native of South Korea, playing the slots with her husband. The couple moved to Reno recently from Palm Springs, Calif.

“A lot of Koreans like to fly into San Francisco and take a short vacation in Reno,” said Schuman, a former flight attendant for United Airlines. “People are very friendly here. It’s very normal, not glittery like Atlantic City.”

Some larger Northern Nevada hotel-casinos specifically market to Asian Americans during the traditional late-December holiday season, since many Asians do not celebrate Christmas or the calendar New Year’s Eve. Carano and Bommarito called it an effective way to get people in the door during notoriously slow periods.

Bommarito also noted that NCOT is hiring a tourism representative in Mexico City to represent Las Vegas and Nevada who could start work in April.

The commission already has a representative in Seoul, South Korea, and recently hired another in Beijing.

Other top travel destinations among minorities were Orlando, Fla.; New York City; Washington, D.C.; Dallas, San Diego, Philadelphia and Orange County, Calif.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.