Come-to-Hawai’i is the pitch
Perhaps indicating how Sunday’s bombing of Afghanistan will impact Kaua’i tourism, Kaua’i County Mayor Maryanne Kusaka and others left that same day on jets eastbound and westbound to promote tourism in Hawai’i.
Gary Baldwin, Kaua’i member of the Hawai’i Tourism Authority, said Monday that people are still booking travel to the island and state, and will continue unless another terrorist event occurs.
And while it is still too early to tell the impact on arrivals of Sunday and Monday’s retaliatory strikes by the U.S. and allies, statistics on visitor arrivals are available at the state Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism Web site (www.hawaii.gov/dbedt/special).
Kusaka and Walter “Freckles” Smith Jr., of Smith’s Motor Boat Service and Smith’s Tropical Paradise, are the Kaua’i members of a state contingent (including current Governor Ben Cayetano and former governors John D. Waihee III and George Ariyoshi) dispatched to Japan to encourage Japanese leisure travel to Hawai’i.
Others, including Sue Kanoho, executive director of the Kaua’i Visitors Bureau, flew east to promote travel to the islands from the mainland. The West Coast, still the most productive market for Kaua’i and the state, is also seen as the place where people can most easily be persuaded to resume traveling.
The trips are part of an overall Hawai’i Visitors and Convention Bureau tourism revival plan as a result of the terrorist attacks and U.S. response to those attacks.
The target in this case is not Osama bin Laden, but rather a return to stability of visitor arrivals by the end of the second quarter of next year, according to the HVCB.
The HVCB launched the separate mainland United States and Japan initiatives this week. Using $20 million in public and private funding, the plan is to spend roughly $10 million before the end of this year and the rest in the first quarter of 2002. Targets are the top 20 U.S. west, midwest and Canada markets, and Tokyo and Osaka in Japan.
The traveling public in general, the news media and sellers of travel will get information through the multimedia blitz, which has a local component of encouraging Hawai’i residents to vacation without leaving the state, and other “buy local” ideas.
Affluent, repeat visitors are being targeted through a wide variety of advertising and public-relations exposure on the mainland.
A lot more will be known about the recent international incidents’ impact on corporate meetings and incentives travel when Edie Hafdahl of the Kaua’i Visitors Bureau returns from a travel executives annual trade show, on now in Chicago.
“Tourism investment is the best use of dollars to quickly stimulate economic recovery,” according to the HVCB.
The “Hit the Road” public relations and media blitz began yesterday on the mainland, with emphasis on San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Cities in Canada, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, Oregon and Washington state will be visited before the end of this month in the $325,000 campaign.
A direct-mail campaign Wednesday will hit 53,000 travel agents and agencies. And bi-monthly fax and e-mail communications beginning next Monday will pitch Hawai’i to 35,000 agents and agencies.
This month’s activities, not including the direct-mail, e-newsletter and productions costs, total $1.86 million. Full-page color and black-and-white newspaper ads will run in cities from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., at a combined total cost of $1.4 million.
The ads, featuring the face of a hula dancer, promote aloha as the breath of life.
In Japan now through the end of the month, $1.1 million will be spent, with nearly half going for full-page color ads highlighting Hawai’i activities.
Among the ads for the Japan market is one with a photo of Cayetano, wife Vicky Cayetano and children of Hawai’i. The ad includes a personal message from the governor, translated, that states “sincere appreciation for your sympathy and prayers. More than ever, we want you to come to Hawai’i. For you to come to Hawai’i now will give us tremendous support and encouragement to be able to move forward. We wait for you with open arms.”
Staff Writer Paul C. Curtis can be reached at mailto:pcurtis@pulitzer.net or 245-3681 (ext. 224).
