Convention Center hosts first meeting
By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

The Hawaii Convention Center hosted its first event yesterday using two meeting rooms on the third floor and the kitchen facilities.

The center, which will not formally open until June, hosted about 350 employees of Roche Products, an Australian pharmaceutical company. Officials from Roche did not return calls seeking comment.

"It's a preopening event, a soft opening," said Randy Tanaka, director of sales at the center.

Tanaka said the Roche meeting was one of several that the center's management company, Philadelphia-based Spectacor Management Group, was glad to sign up to test the center before it opens and before the big conventions start coming.

In this case, Roche Products had booked with a Sheraton hotel that couldn't accommodate part of the convention.

Next month, Feb. 19-22, the 200,000-square-foot exhibition area on the center's ground floor will get its tryout when Houston-based Compaq Computer Corp. hosts a meeting and trade show for 400 people.

It will be the first full use of the exhibit hall, Tanaka said.

Then on Feb. 22, a Japanese cosmetics firm, Charle, will use the center for four dinners in a row hosting 1,500 people at a time. "That will test the ballroom," Tanaka said.

"It's warming up in the right direction," he said, noting that the preopening meetings will give a good test of the facilities prior to the grand opening, tentatively scheduled for June 11.

The biggest meeting before then will be Amway Japan, which is bringing 3,500 here April 12-13. That meeting is expected to generate $29.5 million in tourist spending and $2.3 million in tax revenues, according to the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau.

The next big one after that will be a union convention, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, with 10,000 people in September. That convention should generate $28.8 million in spending and $2.2 million in taxes.

Overall, the HVCB estimates, conventions booked at the center will generate $55.4 million in visitor spending in the first half of 1998, most of it before the facility's formal opening.

And for the fiscal year starting July 1, the $350 million center on the corner of Kapiolani Boulevard and Kalakaua Avenue is expected to bring in $303.4 million in local spending by conventioneers and their families and generate state tax revenue of $23.4 million, the HVCB said.

Information presented by the HVCB at a legislative briefing last week showed 44 definite bookings and 104 tentative bookings over the next 10 years.

The center lost a big one that had been scheduled for September when Autobacs, a Japanese automobile parts business, canceled a meeting of 10,000 people, blaming the uncertain condition of the Japanese economy. The HVCB had estimated $84.4 million in visitor spending and $6.5 million in tax revenues from that meeting.

However a new convention was added to the list today.

About 1,500 to 2,000 delegates and spouses are expected to attend the Edison Electric Institute convention in 2003, which will include a large exhibition.

Institute member Michael May, president and chief executive of Hawaiian Electric Co., said the electrical industry meeting should bring $11 million to $14 million into the Hawaii economy.

The successful pitch to the association was made by the HVCB and the host hotel, the Hilton Hawaiian Village, and was aided by a video, "Islands of Aloha," narrated by Vicky Cayetano, wife of Gov. Ben Cayetano.