The 50-cent CEO Rick Humphreys is being paid a dollar a year but says he hopes he isn't in his job long enough to earn more than 50 cents.
Rick Humphreys steps up to oversee
the Hawaii Tourism Authority,
and on the cheapBy Russ Lynch
rlynch@starbulletin.comThe interim Hawaii Tourism Authority chief executive and executive director said in an interview that he sees his role as "trying to put the place into the position where it's going to be handed over to a permanent person." And he has no desire to be that person.
"If I was interested in any permanent high-profile job, this would be the one, but I'm not," he said.
Humphreys was approached by Seiji Naya, director of the state Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism, to manage the HTA when its first chief executive officer, Robert Fishman, was called up for military service in the Pentagon late last month.
"They knew I was probably available," Humphreys said.
Humphreys, 57, has spent his working life in executive positions with financial institutions, including chairman of Bank of America's Hawaii operations.
A 1961 graduate of Punahou School, he has a bachelor's degree in business from the Menlo College of Business Administration in Atherton, Calif. He has been executive vice president of Amfac Financial, First Federal Savings & Loan (six years) and Bank of Hawaii (eight years).
That doesn't mean he isn't versed in tourism, however. As a banker with institutions that finance local businesses he could hardly have avoided connections with the state's largest industry. On top of that, he served for more than a year as a board member of the Convention Center Authority, working to attract the highest-paying segment of the visitor industry, the meetings and conventions business.
"My job really is to continue a lot of what Bob (Fishman) and the board were doing," he said, which will include enhancing the relationship between the authority and its prime marketing contractors, the Hawaii Visitors & Convention Bureau, for overall tourism and Team Unlimited for sports events that attract visitors.
Humphreys knows that he came into the job a week ago at a difficult time for Hawaii tourism, with arrivals numbers dropping in the travel slump that followed the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
He said he hopes that a permanent replacement for Fishman can be in place in three to six months so he can get on with his own life. Humphreys had been working with the developers of a Big Island residential project over the past two years, since his Bank of America job disappeared when the bank sold its Hawaii branches in 1998.
He left the real estate post recently and began putting together his own business, a "factoring" company that would handle money for businesses, for example by paying for goods and services and managing the purchasing company's accounts receivable to recover the cost. He said he is looking forward to getting on with that when the HTA no longer needs him.
"It's difficult to be an intermediate or interim head," but the HTA is now a mature organization after its three years getting established and is run by dedicated and efficient people, he said.
The HTA is already working on the process that will lead to the appointment of a permanent CEO now that the three-year contract with Fishman has been ended by mutual consent, said Roy Tokujo, head of entertainment marketing business Cove Entertainment Inc. and unpaid chairman of the HTA board.
The HTA's administration committee, consisting of Tokujo, Shari Chang of Aloha Airlines and David Carey of Outrigger Enterprises Inc., "will be setting up criteria and the process by which we will be selecting our next executive director and how the process will work," Tokujo said. He said he hopes the committee will have its recommendations on the selection process ready to put before the full board at an HTA meeting scheduled for Wednesday.
One thing is clear, he said. The board does not want to have the CEO as an independent contractor, as Fishman was.
"We had difficulty dealing with the contractor position. It doesn't really work very well," Tokujo said.
"Bob wanted to be an employee, but at the time there was concern about the 'high three' situation," Tokujo said. Fishman had two top government jobs before, the most recent being managing director of the City & County of Honolulu, and bringing him into what would have been a $150,000-a-year job with a state agency could have brought criticism because of the high level of retirement benefits that would be due to him.
Meanwhile, Tokujo is delighted to see Humphreys aboard while the search goes on.
"For us, it's a godsend. We needed somebody to kind of step up to the plate to help us during this particular period. We understand why Bob had to go. The country called.
"But we are also in a very critical time."
The state's tourism-driven economy is in turmoil "and to have someone with Rick's expertise available, it's almost seamless. He's really good, this guy, with the skills he brings to us."
What type of person is the right one for the permanent job?
"We want somebody who feels strongly not only about the industry but about the people of Hawaii, somebody who has the community at heart," Tokujo said.