Event planners
try Hawaii
Key decision-makers
By Russ Lynch
will put the isles' convention
center to the test
Star-BulletinIn 2001, Hawaii and its new convention center will be host to a meeting of executives whom local tourism officials will really want to impress.
The International Association for Exposition Management, a group whose members are key decision-makers on where to hold conventions for their organizations, has picked the Hawaii Convention Center for its June, 2001 meeting.
Steven G. Hacker, president of the 3,500-member IAEM, said that his group took a long, hard look at Hawaii before making its decision.
Hacker, here on a short vacation from his Dallas headquarters, talked during a walk-through at the convention center yesterday about how Hawaii wooed the meeting and how important it could be for Hawaii's future convention business.
From Hawaii's point of view, winning the convention of 800 to 1,000 executives means bringing in decision-makers and having a chance to impress them as to why they should recommend Ha-waii for their future meetings.
Hacker said it is normal for convention locations to pick up bookings after IAEM delegates meet there and go home and make recommendations.
Sandra Moreno, vice president of meetings, conventions and incentives, at the Hawaii Visitors & Convention Bureau, said Hawaii worked hard to win this one precisely because of the opportunity the meeting will create to sell future conventions.
Hacker said that IAEM's decision was strictly business-based and that Hawaii had to overcome a number of hurdles. "There's the perception that you may not be able to convince your boss that going to Hawaii is a business trip," he said.
Hacker also said IAEM's conventions have to make money for the association. The half-yearly meetings are a big source of the income that allows the association to function, he said.
The association is getting over the first barrier by stressing that the meeting here is just as much a business meeting as it would be if it were held in Pittsburgh or Atlantic City.
He and Ken Kanter, the only Hawaii exhibition executive to be elected to the IAEM international board of directors, have been stressing that this is an urban meeting, in the middle of a major city.
On the business side, the convention will make money for the association, thanks to some help from those who wanted to see the meeting here, Hacker said. American Airlines, for example, is guaranteeing that those from as far away as the East Coast will pay no more than $750 for the round-trip ticket.
Hotels kicked in with a guarantee of room rates around $130 a night, "less than what we paid three years ago in Cleveland, Ohio," Hacker said.
Kanter, an exhibition manager with Douglas Trade Shows in Honolulu, said Hawaii can't rest on its laurels and has to be extremely competitive.
It will be vital, he said, not only for Hawaii to put on a great showing during the IAEM meeting but for some steady work to be done in the three years leading up to it.
IAEM members need to be convinced over and over of the value of Hawaii as an international meetings center, Kanter said.
Randy Angelillo, chairman of the Hawaii chapter of IAEM, said he kept telling IAEM that the chapter wanted to host this meeting. Angelillo sees it as an opportunity to sell not only the high-technology convention center but Hawaii in general as a mid-Pacific, international meetings-and-services headquarters.
The economic impact wielded by the 3,500 IAEM members around the world is enormous, Hacker said.
"Of the 200 largest trade shows in the United States, for example, all but one are members of IAEM," he said.
