LOS ANGELES — Crystal Resendez was working in the Virgin Megastore in New York’s Union Square on the morning of 9/11, and vividly remembers crowds of people fleeing the World Trade Center covered in ash. Today Resendez, 30, is general manager of the store, next to Mann’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood Boulevard, one of the hottest tourist spots on America’s West Coast. ‘There’s no doubt we’re still suffering much more than New York from the drop-off in foreign visitors,’ she said. ‘The Union Square store is beating its sales records, but we’re definitely not.’ Midwest accents seemed to dominate the throngs jostling around the freshly made hand and foot prints of actor Kevin Costner in the Chinese Theatre forecourt, but few of them were going into the Virgin store. ‘I think the recent bomb threat at Heathrow has had a big effect on visitor numbers,’ said Resendez. ‘It seems to have affected the whole of Europe’s tourist decisions whether to come here.’ Last Monday relatives of the 2,700 people killed in the Twin Towers gathered to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks. At the same time, 1,000 leaders of America’s travel industry were preparing […]