HVCB prepares new ad campaign

By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

Boosted by a new funding promise from United Airlines, the Hawaii Visitors & Convention Bureau is getting ready to launch a carefully targeted series of promotions on the mainland to boost tourism.

HVCB members were told about the plans at a membership meeting last night at the Hawaiian Regent Hotel. The HVCB is now finalizing its list of cities to be bombarded with advertising, public relations, shows and entertainment, said Roberta Rinker-Ludloff, vice president for marketing.

The HVCB's "industry marketing program," which is in addition to its on-going promotions, is a partnership with the private sector. It grew out of a challenge by Outrigger Hotels & Resorts that followed Gov. Ben Cayetano's action in September to waive airline landing fees for two years, saving the airlines an estimated $40 million. However, the campaign has taken a different tack and is no longer the generic Hawaii "brand image" campaign that Outrigger had envisioned.

Tony Vericella, HVCB president, said after last night's meeting that the airlines, which want to see direct benefits from their spending, weren't happy with the idea of a small identification tagged on to the end of broadly aimed advertisements. Therefore, they didn't want to just hand funding over to the HVCB. Instead, they have chosen the HVCB to direct the marketing while working in a close partnership, he said.

Outrigger offered to spend $1 million over two years and United's decision to spend $2.5 million, announced yesterday, was the latest in a series of promises by airlines.

United, which also drew praise from the HVCB for its decision yesterday to resume flying nonstop from Los Angeles to Kauai in June, said half of the $2.5 million will be spent in partnership with the HVCB in the campaign which will run through 1999.

United will spend the other $1.25 million in separate partnership deals with companies it works with, such as its interisland code-sharing partner, Aloha Airlines, and tour operators, said Norm Reeder, United managing director-Hawaii. It will be new money in addition to the $3.2 million United already had targeted to advertise Hawaii in 1998.

The deal with the HVCB will develop United Airlines advertising directed into markets where the HVCB is making a more general push for Hawaii. That also will happen with the money to be spent by other airlines which have offered funding in proportion to the landing fees they would have been paying. Hawaiian Airlines said it is willing to spend $3 million. Aloha Airlines will spend $2.4 million. American Airlines says it will spend $500,000.

Other airlines have said they are considering how to react to Cayetano's landing-fee waiver.

Rinker-Ludloff told the HVCB meeting that the campaign details will be finalized this week.

She said the HVCB has a positive outlook for 1998 and interviews with travel agents and other specialists suggest improvement in the first quarter.

Rinker-Ludloff also used the opportunity of the meeting to defend the HVCB's new glossy travel guide, "The Islands of Aloha," now being distributed to those who call the HVCB's "800" number or inquire through the Internet.

The publication, produced for the first time by a Canadian company, Plan B, after five years in the hands of a Honolulu company, Davick Publications Inc., has come under fire for what critics say are factual errors and incorrect use of the Hawaiian language.

Particularly irksome to critics such as Outrigger Hotels Chairman Richard Kelley was the publication's statement that the correct way of describing directions in Hawaiian is "ma uka" for toward the hills and "ma kai" for toward the ocean, two separate words in each case.

The HVCB took the matter to Ahahui Olelo Hawaii, a Hawaiian language specialist organization, and was told the usage was correct, Rinker-Ludloff said.

She said the publication brought in 86 paying advertisers this time compared with 72 last year.

The HVCB members also heard some encouraging words about the Japanese market, which produces about one-third of Hawaii's tourists. Vericella said one fear caused by the Asian currency crisis, that Japanese would travel to the suddenly cheap destinations in Southeast Asia instead of Hawaii, has not materialized.

"The Japanese are not traveling to Southeast Asia," he said. People who fear that kind of shift "forget the emotional things," he said. The Japanese don't want to go to economically depressed areas, he said.