Aloha magazine
suspends publication

Publisher blames poor economy

By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

Honolulu publisher Rick Davis said today he has suspended publication of Aloha magazine after 20 years promoting Hawaii as a tourist destination.

Davis, president of Davick Publications Inc., said he lost advertising revenue because of Hawaii's poor economy and because efforts to find a way to keep going, including selling it to the state, have failed.

Calling his publication a valuable asset to the tourism industry, Davis said in an interview that last month he proposed to Seiji Naya, director of the state Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism, that the state consider taking over the magazine but he never received a response.

Brad Mossman, the department's deputy director, said today the state is not in the position to own a business but DBEDT helped arrange conversations with the Hawaii Visitors & Convention Bureau to use the magazine for promotions and marketing. "We do feel he has a high-quality magazine and it has done a lot to help sell Hawaii," he said.

Tony Vericella, president and chief executive of the HVCB, said the bureau had pledged to advertise in every issue of the magazine but other advertisers did not back a new format which would include a letter from the governor each issue focusing on events in Hawaii.

Vericella also said the bureau, like the state, was not in a position to subsidize the production costs of the magazine.

Because deadlines are already past to get the next issue moving, Davis decided to quit publication of the magazine which prints 80,000 to 90,000 copies each issue.

Davis said his normal staff of eight is down to four. They are finishing up two annual publications his company does for the tourism industry, "Maui The Magic Isles" and "Oahu, Where Aloha Begins," both for island HVCB chapters.

Officially called "Aloha, The Magazine of Hawaii and the Pacific," the magazine reached about 225,000 readers on the mainland, its prime market, Davis said. Published every two months, the publication last came out in March.

That was the February-March issue. The company had earlier canceled the January-February issue pushing it back a month, saying at the time that the new publishing cycle would be a better fit with the plans of advertisers. But that didn't work.

If the issue due now could be published, it would lose about $30,000 but any delay would mean bigger losses since the remaining advertisers won't wait, Davis said. "Advertising budgets had already been cut. At this stage in our economy, ad budgets just won't carry the magazine," he said.

Davick Publications had published the HVCB's travel planner book, the "Islands of Aloha," for five years until the company lost the publishing rights to a Canadian business in a competitive-bid process. Davis, whose company profited from the advertising it sold, said he lost about 30 to 40 percent of his business when that work was gone.