Rebuilding Hawaii TourismHawaii Tourism Authority

Phone: krw0930@msn.com E-Mail: krw0930@msn.com

Rebuilding Hawaii Tourism

Hawaii Tourism Authority

Kelsey Waite

Rebuilding Hawaii Tourism1

Table of Contents

Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Goals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Recession . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Japan Tsunami . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5-6

Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Seminars to the Public . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8Marketing Outside the Box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Discounted Travel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Works Cited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

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OverviewHawaii Tourism Authority is a government-sanctioned organization that is meant to fund efforts of promotion for the state of Hawaii. HTA works under the state legislature and the governor of Hawaii, Neil Abercrombie. The CEO and President of Hawaii Tourism Authority is Mike McCartney (Hawaii).Here is HTA’s Total Budget for 2011. Brand Management Category FY 2011 Budget

(in millions

Access/Airlift Development Programs $6.1Hawaii Culture $1.7Natural Resources $3.0Safety and Security $0.5Tourism Product Development $3.0Workforce Development $0.2Leisure Marketing $37.1Sports Marketing $7.1Business Marketing $10.3Opportunity Fund $3.5Communications & Outreach $0.3Total Brand Management $72.8

As seen above, Hawaii Tourism Authority’s major aspects are Marketing, Sporting Events, Product Development, and Tourism Research. HTA also oversees the Hawaii Convention Center and the money that goes towards Hawaii Culture is spent on festivals and events that highlight the local culture.

Hawaii Tourism Authority invests in sporting events such as PGA golf tournaments, the NFL ProBowl, and XTERRA World Championships. The Hawaii Convention Center is in the top 15 in the United States. Three of the largest events from 2010 hosted here were the Baptist World Alliance, Alzheimer’s Association, and the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans Conventions.

Goals

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In this document, there will be an assessment of the current procedures and how they can be made even better to improve the state’s tourism revenues.

This will help both Hawaii Tourism Authority, and the community of Hawaii. My plans are to ensure the growth of tourism to the beautiful state of Hawaii by recognizing problems, and implementing valuable solutions.

HTA VALUES:

As an organization, and among ourselves and others, we value:

Openness and respectfulness. Collaboration and partnership. Our host and multi-ethnic cultures. Social responsibility to our community. Excellence and integrity in who we are and what we do.

By following our values, we will be able to move our organization in a positive direction. I will start this by locating recent problems, and then state solutions that could reverse the decline of tourism since 2008.

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Issues : United States RecessionThe United States saw a large drop in the DOW during the third quarter in 2008.

This caused Hawaii air travel to drop by 13.5%. It affected both international and homeland flights. In 2007, the annual flights throughout Hawaii were 36,364,056. In 2009, the annual flight number was 30,293,737 (more than 6 million less than 2 years before).

The number of flights have been getting higher, yet there is a deficit from the previous years that needs to be undone. This effort has been stalled due to another problem that lowered tourism in Hawaii more recently.

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Issues : Japan Tsunami

In the following chart, you can see how Hawaii was starting to recover. Yet, in the second half of the stats, you can clearly see a fall in numbers from Japan. This fall will be detailed farther in the page.

Visitor Arrivals February 2011 February 2010 % Change

U.S. West 578,634 517,554 +11.8

U.S. East 141,737 127,816 +10.9

Japan 102,906 95,141 +8.2

Canada 58,598 48,958 +19.7

Visitor Arrivals March 2011 March 2010 % Change

U.S. West 237,910 230,065 +3.4

U.S. East 159,441 148,774 +7.2

Japan 89,779 109,339 -17.9

Canada 68,356 50,745 +34.7

Issues : Japan Tsunami

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This fall in travel from Japan was caused by the March 11, 2011 Earthquake and following Tsunami. Historically, Japanese travel significantly less in the aftermath of a national emergency or disaster. In the month since the natural disaster, we have seen a 17.9% drop from Japan alone.

These numbers are significant because Japanese tourists make up 17% of Hawaii’s total visitors.

Another large impact on Hawaii Tourism Authority from the disasters would be the cancellation of a Japanese convention that had an estimated 1,400 attendees. This dropped the bookings of the Resort hosting the convention from 92% full to 54%. This is dramatic for a 1600 room resort.

The last problem for Hawaii associated with the tsunami, is the powerful waves that reached the coasts of Hawaii. A local resort, the Kona Village Resort, is still closed due to the damaged caused by the tsunami. 24 of the 125 bungalows were either severely destroyed or became unattached and started to float out to sea.

The waves caused $30 million worth of damage to Hawaii tourist businesses across the state.

Solutions : Seminars to the Public

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Hawaii Tourism Authority already is set to host a series of seminars to business and other government officials. The seminars are planned to discuss the effects on the tsunami on all aspects of Hawaii.

This would be beneficial to local business owners or managers so they can be aware of any changes they need to undergo to move forward in making money.

The only problem with this seminar series is the cost.

For each person for each seminar the cost is $30.

The issue is that the larger resorts may decide to bring in a manager from each aspect of their business. This could be up to 20 participants from each resort, which can cost over $600 for one seminar. The pricing could be even more detrimental to smaller businesses especially in a time when they are losing customers.

My solution to this problem is to offer a discount to businesses with more people attending, as well as a package deal if the business attends all the seminars.

New Costs:

$20 each (for 3 or more participants)$100 for the entire seminar series (per participant)

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Solutions : Conventions

Since Hawaii Convention is under the regulations and authority of HTA, it will be simple to implement a few suggestions to this beautiful business. Since the Hawaii Convention Center is ranked in the top 15 convention centers for the United States, it needs to live up to its name.

The largest convention held here in 2010 was the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans Convention. Roughly 12,500 people attended this convention.

When compared to large events (just in the United States) like E3 (45,600 attendees) and GenCon (30,000 attendees), it is significantly smaller.

My solution is to put in a bid to host a convention called Comicon. Last year, Comicon had an estimated 125,000 people in attendance. The contract for hosting Comicon expires in 2015 for the San Diego location. If Hawaii puts it name in for the running, this will create free marketing now, instead of the long-run benefits hosting this event will have.

In the future, this will benefit Hawaii Tourism because according to surveying college students (the usual age of Comicon attendees), students travel more with family than any other group.

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This is helpful to Hawaii businesses because while some will attend the convention, their families will be out spending money in other locations.

It is apparent that perhaps less Americans will attend, but that is acceptable because Hawaii is in a central location for international travel. Many people will fly in from other countries to attend Comicon, because it closer to them than San Diego was.

Solutions : Marketing Outside the BoxHawaii Tourism Authority contracts 5 separate companies to market the Hawaii name as a great tourist destination across the world. These 5 companies include Hawaii North America, Hawaii Japan, and Hawaii Europe.

When looking at the chart in the Issues : Japan Tsunami section, you can see that Canadian tourism is up 34% from last year. This is a very significant increase that had great potential.

I suggest we market more to Canada by taking $2.5 million dollars from the Japan marketing fund to get the word out more in Canada. The marketing we are already doing there is apparently working very well, so we need to simply increase the volume and expand our campaign to more of Canada.

This includes buying more airtime to air the commercials already playing in Canada. Also, buying space on Canadian news websites is quite low when compared to how much money might come from it. We can use the same commercials and fliers we use now, but expand its audience.

Canadians stay on average 13 days per visit compared to Japanese tourists’ 6 days.

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Both the U.S. West and East have more tourists travelling to Hawaii than Japan. Hawaii Tourism Authority needs to market to the younger generation. When surveying students in college, students said they would travel during a recession in order to “get away from stress,” so they may have less consequences from spending money.

A way to market more to young adults would be through Facebook. By adding a link to gohawaii.com from a Facebook page, younger adults would be more likely to plan vacations and spring breaks online.

Solutions : Discounted Travel

Since Hawaii Tourism Authority already oversees the convention center, Hawaiian Air, gohawaii.com, plans festivals, and invests in sporting events, I think it would be a relatively quick process to create package deals for returning customers.

Many of Hawaii’s tourists are return visitors. In fact, 68% of Japanese and 81% of visitors from the United States West are return visitors, which makes it very important to keep those customers satisfied.

One way to keep them happy would be to give them incentive for booking 2 flights or more per year. That does not mean fly twice, just booking, that way they can plan in advance. I would like to see Hawaiian Air give each customer an I.D. number, that way every time they book a flight through them it will be recorded. We can use these numbers to give discounts to members who book 2 or more flights a year. By going on line, it also gives us more money because they will not be using other travel sites.

Another way to get people to use online sites for booking trips through us would to give free or discounted admission to events and festivals in Hawaii

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during their stay. This is possible because HTA organizes many of these events themselves.

Hawaii Tourism Authority must not forget about the people in Japan. They will return to Hawaii, and when they do, they may have less money to spend than previously. A way to ensure their return is to help them save while planning their vacations. HTA can do this by keeping their presence at the JATA World Travel Fain in Japan. This convention has an average attendance of 110,000 people every year. Its attendance is made up of 70% travel agents and the rest are customers themselves.

By supplying coupon booklets to the travel agents, we would be encouraging more customers to travel to Hawaii. If for some reason people were thinking about going somewhere else, savings could be a large incentive for Japanese travelers.

Conclusion

Hawaii Tourism Authority will continue making revenue even without using my solutions. The only way for them to grow as a company is to implement new ways of doing business.

In order to regain the influence they had in the 1990’s Hawaiian businesses should take to heart the way savings marketing affect people when choosing where to travel.

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Hawaii Tourism Authority has the potential to bring much more money to the citizens of Hawaii, by adding a few new techniques. They can prosper and with these changes, HTA can afford to give more money to product development and Hawaiian Culture.

Works Cited

Hawaii Tourism 2010 Annual Report.Williams, Ronald. http://www.hawaiitourismauthority.org/pdf/HTA_2010_Annual_Report_FINAL.pdf

“Quake Sinks Hawaii’s Tourism”. Carlton, Jim. Wall Street Journal. 4 April, 2011.

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U.S. GDP. Graph.h ttp://theexplosivegeneration.com/wp-c ontent/uploads/2009/02/ _45429709_us_rec_466.jpg

Visitor Statistics.http://hawaii.gov/dbedt/info/visitor-stats

Who We Are. Hawaii Tourism Authority.http://www.hawaiitourismauthority.org/index.cfm?page=who_index&level1 =who_we_are