Japan exec:
Tourism to isles
to stay soft

At a Honolulu summit,
the chairman of JTB says
Japanese travelers still
want to come here

By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

Hawaii can expect tourism from Japan to decline through the next 12 months or so to an even greater extent than it has so far this year, a Japanese travel industry leader said today.

Arrivals from Japan are expected to drop by 160,000 arrivals in the current fiscal year, said Isao Matsuhashi, chairman of Japan Travel Bureau Inc., Japan's largest travel agency. That would bring Japanese arrivals below 2 million for the first time in three years.

But Matsuhashi said the Japanese still have plenty of savings in their bank accounts and they want to travel, especially to Hawaii.

The state needs to make itself so attractive that they will come, regardless of their worries about the weak yen and the poor economy at home, Matsuhashi told the opening session of the first Japan-Hawaii Tourism Summit, organized by the Japan-Hawaii Economic Council.

"They have money to spend," said Matsuhashi, who is chairman of the Japan Association of Travel Agents. "If we present them what they desire, they will still come," he said.

Matsuhashi and Aloha Airlines President and CEO Glenn Zander, the two co-chairmen of the talks being held in the First Hawaiian Center, said they expected the private discussions through the day to end with concrete proposals to improve Japan-Hawaii tourism.

The tourism summit grew out of discussions the two sides had at the Ihilani Spa & Resort in 1995.

Three years ago "the yen was at 85 to the dollar and visitors (from Japan) had topped 2 million," Zander said. "The biggest challenge then was to try to entice a few more (Japanese) visitors to go beyond Oahu."

Now, with the yen at 142 to the dollar there is a decline in arrivals from Japan and in their length of stay and a significant fall in retail spending by Japanese in Hawaii, Zander said.

The Japan-Hawaii Economic Council meets on Lanai this weekend.