Reported by Star-Bulletin staff & wire
Friday, May 15, 1998
GST Telecom's unit to work with hotels
GST Telecom Hawaii has formed a new unit, GST Hospitality Services, that will offer telecommunication services to local hotels and their guests.Ed Soto, hospitality sales manager for GST, said increasing demands for more telephone lines has created an opportunity in the hotel market.
"Visitors increasingly need to maintain contact with their offices or families at home," he said. "Our goal is to work with hotel clients to ensure their guests have access to the most reliable and advanced telecommunications services."
GST Telecom is subsidiary of Vancouver, Wash.-based GST Telecommunications Inc.
Isle-tour wholesaler planning to go public
Global Vacation Group Inc., which announced earlier this week that it has acquired tour wholesaler MTI Vacations Inc., today said it is planning an initial public offering of stock to raise up to $63.3 million.The company filed a registration statement detailing the issue. No issue date has been set.
Global is owned by Thayer Equity Investors III L.P., based in Washington, D.C. In addition to Chicago-based MTI, Global Vacations owns two other major companies in the Hawaii tour business, Mt. Laurel, N.J.-based Haddon Holidays and San Jose, Calif.-based Classic Custom Vacations.
Global also owns Boston-based Globetrotters Inc. and New York-based Allied Tours. The company plans to use the new capital for expansion.
Barnwell reports loss from oil development
Barnwell Industries Inc., a Honolulu-based oil and gas exploration and development company, today reported a loss of $2.9 million for the three months through March 31, compared with a profit of $410,000 in the year-earlier quarter.Most of the downturn came from a write-down of $2 million for costs incurred in developing U.S. oil and gas properties, mainly in the Michigan Basin, the company said today.
Revenues for the latest period, the second quarter of Barnwell's financial year, were $2.9 million, down 25.6 percent from $3.9 million in the 1997 quarter.
Hawaii water company sees its losses grow
Hawaiian Natural Water Co. had a first-quarter loss of $544,059, 15.3 percent greater than the $471,948 loss it reported for first quarter of last year.The Honolulu-based company, which bottles and markets spring water filtered through natural volcanic rock under the Mauna Loa volcano on the Big Island, attributed the loss to marketing and development expenses. Sales of $399,603 in the latest quarter were up 84.4 percent from $216,683 in the year-earlier period.
In other news . . .
SAN FRANCISCO -- Computer publishing giant Ziff-Davis Inc. is launching a $100 million, 24-hour cable television channel, ZDTV, dedicated to computing and the Internet. Ziff-Davis announced a pact with cable giant Tele-Communications Inc. that will give it entree to sell its new channel to all the TCI cable affiliates.
See expanded coverage in today's Honolulu Star-Bulletin.
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