Category Archives: Tourism

Selling Travel To Hawaii

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No aloha shirts! (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

I spent Wednesday at the Hawaii Tourism Authority’s spring market review. HTA pulls in its marketing contractors from “around the world” to tell the Hawaii visitor industry what is being done for them. I used quotes because HTA doesn’t market Hawaii globally. Hawaii’s official tourism marketing is restricted to the United States, Canada, Japan, China, South Korea, a little bit in Taiwan, Australia, a bit in New Zealand and a pittance in Germany and the United Kingdom. This is largely due to mythology that tourists won’t come unless they have direct flights.

While I am concerned about where Hawaii isn’t represented, the contract marketing people appear to be doing a pretty good job with the funding they have. Some have plenty (United States, Japan, China) while others bear up under the “do more with less” syndrome that afflicts governments everywhere. All in all, it’s a pretty creative bunch that ably cashes in on the “brand” that is Hawaii worldwide. I tweeted interesting tidbits during the event (@OldPaddler), but here are some more detailed notes about Hawaii’s international tourism efforts.

HTA’s message was upbeat. Yes, the recession hurt the tourism industry, but travel to Hawaii is rebounding and airline capacity to Hawaii is showing serious growth. The gaudy headline from 2011 is a 90% increase in capacity between Seoul and Honolulu, admittedly from a low base. Hawaiian Airlines added seats from Japan and Australia. Charter flights were launched from Shanghai, with continuing rumors of more to come. Hawaiian is starting non-stop flights to New York in 2012, which will give better connections to travelers from Europe. And, this May, little Mokulele Airlines will try a Honolulu-Chicago non-stop that will continue on to London Stansted. Talk about ambitious! Listening to David Uchiyama, HTA’s vice president for brand management, though, I came away with the read that it is the pre-existence of direct flights that governs where HTA spends its marketing dollars. While Uchiyama paid lip service to developing new markets, it was clear that if you can’t get to Hawaii without changing planes, he isn’t very interested. I have railed against that attitude for years because I have seen plenty of well-heeled, adventurous travelers who find hard-to-reach destinations among the most attractive. And they tend to spend a lot and stay a longer time.

Hawaii’s meetings market got a tremendous boost in 2011 when Honolulu hosted 21 heads-of-state and thousands of others for APEC in November. All those news broadcasts showing APEC delegates in tropical surroundings were gold for the tourism industry – and especially for the meetings industry. Hawaii has long been attractive for incentive travel, but has big problems when it comes to large meetings, conferences and trade shows. A major international trade show is a no-go in Hawaii simply because of shipping logistics. It takes a lot of time and even more money to move large, heavy exhibit materials and products to Hawaii – a disadvantage to being a paradise in the middle of an ocean.

Hawaii has done better with conferences and regularly attracts big groups in the medical and scientific fields. Cardiologists and dentists find us especially attractive. Honolulu has hosted the Pacific Telecommunications Council annually for many years, and there is a new annual green energy conference that shows considerable promise. But these big conferences aren’t as easy to come by as you might imagine. Randall Tanaka, assistant general manager of the Hawaii Convention Center in Honolulu, pointed out that a convention organizer has to really want to place an event in Hawaii because he is going to take a hit on attendance. Any Hawaii meeting or convention is going to be called a boondoggle by somebody, plus the industry still suffers from “AIG syndrome”, a backlash against seemingly exorbitant corporate travel. That, says Tanaka, gives destinations such as San Diego or San Francisco a strong advantage over Honolulu. He cited the example of the American Dental Association, which often comes to Hawaii despite the knowledge that they can draw twice the number of dentists if they meet in Las Vegas. Here’s the presentation on MICE travel. It’s big, takes a while to load.

One lesson from APEC that Tanaka and others can’t mention in public is that the travel cost and distance to Hawaii can minimize potential protestors if your meeting is at all sensitive. We saw this in spades with APEC. The November 2011 meetings were in the heyday of the “Occupy” movements and some predicted a tropical “Battle of Seattle”. Never happened. See my post on the “bikini protests“.

A similar point is that meetings can be held in Hawaii with relative anonymity. Working closely with the consul general for Japan, it took me years to convince the guys with green eye shades in Tokyo and Washington to use Hawaii as a site for bilateral trade negotiations. Our arguments were that neither negotiating team had to travel as far or get as jet-lagged as going to one of the capitols, that Honolulu cost less than either Washington or Tokyo, and that we could stage meetings that the press would never hear about unless we wanted the coverage. That is still largely true. We began holding bilateral trade talks in Hawaii in the mid-1980s, added more countries to the mix and, so far as I know, they still happen here. But nobody knows.

We’ll get into more country-specific tourism talk in upcoming posts.

Chamber Opens Mouth, Inserts Foot

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Ad without a difference

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce bit the big one yesterday. In their infinite wisdom, sitting a quarter of the way around the world, the Chamber inserted itself in Hawaii’s race for a U.S. Senate seat. Bear with me on the politics; this does have something to do with international trade. Let me set the scene for you, ignoring the fringe candidates.

Hawaii is overwhelmingly Democratic, has been for decades. So local and national Republicans are very excited that they have a viable candidate to take a Senate seat out here, something that has been only a dream for them since Hiram Fong left the Senate in 1977. Linda Lingle, a former two-term governor, earned good marks for supporting business and Hawaii’s economy. She is opposed in the primary by John Carroll, a former state senator, airline pilot and businessman. I know them both slightly. John is a nice guy, and I agree with his views on shipping, but Linda will be the Republican candidate. I am not sure her support for Sarah Palin four years ago will help in the general election, but Linda is a very strong campaigner with impressive financial backing.

The two main Democratic contenders are Mazie Hirono, former Lt. Governor and present Congresswoman, and Ed Case, a former Congressman. Again, I know both of them, Mazie slightly, and Ed better. It is fair to say that Mazie is the Democratic establishment candidate, which makes her rather liberal from a mainland perspective. Ed is more of a centrist, and so is viewed with suspicion by the left-leaning establishment out here. That said, they are both strong campaigners. Case vs. Lingle, or Hirono vs. Lingle, it’s going to be vicious in the fall.

There are strong, polarizing differences on economic issues among these four. Mazie Hirono, like her mentor Senator Daniel Inouye, tends to vote the party line on trade issues. (For you trade policy junkies, Hirono voted against all three free trade agreements last fall.) John Carroll and Ed Case, though in opposing parties, both want to repeal the Jones Act (or its application to Hawaii) because it raises shipping costs for anything moving into or out of the state via the U.S. West Coast (which is almost everything). Hirono supports the Jones Act and I don’t recall that Lingle did anything about it during her time as governor. Lingle was a strong supporter of trade and investment with China. Case has broader trade interests. I’m not sure about Carroll and Hirono. [Full disclosure: Ed Case is a former member of the Hawaii Pacific Export Council, which I chair, so I know his views on trade issues better than I do the others.]

There is one trade issue on which all four candidates agree, regardless of party affiliation and political spectrum. No politician in Hawaii can ignore or diss tourism – and all support Hawaii’s #1 industry and leading export earner. All have done so in state office, and both Case and Hirono have done so in Congress. If there is any topic that wins bipartisan support in Hawaii, it is tourism. Lingle, Case and Hirono have each endorsed President Obama’s new national plan to support tourism. Carroll probably has, too. Tourism is NOT a differentiating issue.

So the U.S. Chamber of Commerce decided to endorse Lingle and yesterday began fielding TV ads in her favor. What issue did they pick to emphasize? Her support for tourism! Nice flashy ad. No substance, and no suggestion of how Lingle’s support for tourism is different from her opponents, but the photography is good. There must be another agenda at work, since this is perhaps the only issue on which all the candidates can agree.

I suspect the Chamber’s support for Lingle will backfire, as she was already being accused of relying too much on financing from outside Hawaii. The Chamber ad will tend to reinforce that whether the charge is true or not. That’s not a problem for her in the primary, but could be a big issue come November. If there is an impact in the primaries, it may be to foster a suspicion of business, which would tend to favor Mazie Hirono over Ed Case. And that could put Mazie Hirono in the U.S. Senate – probably not the U.S. Chamber’s objective.

What Do Chinese Want In Hawaii?

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Johnson Choi is a Honolulu businessman who does much of his work in China, Hong Kong and with Chinese in California. Johnson has been taking an informal survey of his Chinese contacts to find out what seriously rich travelers from China are looking for. His major intent, I think, is to find some evidence that Chinese tourists might be attracted to Hawaii by Hawaiian culture. You know, hula, slack-key guitar, poi, grass skirts – all that stuff Hawaii stresses in its tourism marketing. Johnson has come up with five questions for his unscientific survey and has kindly shared the comments of his Chinese friends.

What role does Hawaii’s unique culture play in attracting Chinese visitors to our islands? While sun, sea and surf are part of the equation, Hawaiian culture and history are not. The fact that Chinese officialdom has come to Hawaii (e.g., for APEC last fall) counts for something, but so does Hawaii’s relative isolation. It’s almost humorous, but Johnson tells me that China’s super rich come to Hawaii because they know they won’t attract any press while they are here. He suggests they can walk the beaches with their girlfriends and no one will recognize them. Probably true.

Five-O's HQ doesn't translate.

What do Chinese visitors think of the Bishop Museum and ‘Iolani Palace? They don’t. These are two of the most important sites in Honolulu if you are remotely interested in Hawaiian or Polynesian culture and history. Johnson’s friends are unimpressed. Few Chinese care about Hawaii’s history – except maybe for the years that Sun Yat-sen spent here – and virtually none want to spend more than thirty minutes at historic sites – except for the U.S.S. Arizona memorial. (The same has to be said for the vast majority of Hawaii’s visitors, wherever they come from. If it comes to a choice between spending time at a museum or on the beach …)

What do they want to see more of in Hawaii? Salespeople, hotel staff or others who speak Mandarin. To be fair, Hawaii is working on this. Sheraton has been in the forefront, and more and more of Waikiki’s high-end stores are looking for Mandarin speakers. It seems particularly frustrating at the airport. Hawaii had the same problem when Japanese visitors first came, managed to catch up and turned catering to Japanese into a very profitable business. These aren’t languages picked up quickly. (I know, it took me quite a while to learn to order lunch or give taxi instructions as an expat in Taipei.)

What is missing in Hawaii? Good Chinese food. Hawaii has some decent Chinese restaurants, but most are old-style Cantonese – and they are not in Waikiki or in major hotels where rich Chinese visitors will find them. We need top-of-the-line restaurants in Waikiki that feature the rest of China’s cuisines. And I defy you to find a decent Chinese breakfast in our hotels. Chinese visitors will try other foods, but, like most people, they want their own comfort foods.

We have plenty of Korean bars, but little other late-night entertainment. Chinese visitors tend to fly in from the west, so jet lag leads them to be up late. And they expect Vegas-style, big-name shows. Most of Hawaii’s entertainment is geared to travelers from North America who go to bed early. We have had the same complaints for years from our Japanese and Australian visitors, but little has been done about it.

As a final question, Johnson asks his Chinese friends what they think of the idea of doing business in Hawaii. He says they try to be polite, but their comments and facial expressions boil down to “Are you kidding me?”.

Seems like Hawaii has some work to do.