Reported by Star-Bulletin staff & wire
Wednesday, May 26, 1999
Starwood to hold convention in Hawaii
Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. will hold its global management conference at the Hawaii Convention Center this fall, bringing in 2,000 people, including its own management personnel and commercial exhibitors showing off their goods and services to the managers.Gov. Ben Cayetano, who was to announce the Nov. 29-Dec.2 conference this afternoon, said it is believed to be the largest hotel management conference held in Hawaii. Starwood's top executive in Hawaii, Keith Vieira, vice president and director of operations, said the visitors are expected to spend $15 million on Oahu and $5 million on the neighbor islands. They will be housed in Starwood's Sheraton and Westin hotels in the islands. Vieira said students of the School of Travel Industry Management at the University of Hawaii and the Kapiolani Community College will be there to learn from the top managers.
Cheap Tickets logs 1 million 'Net users
Cheap Tickets Inc., the Honolulu-based retailer of discount airline tickets, said it has passed the 1 million mark in the number of potential customers who have registered to buy tickets through its Internet site, www.cheaptickets.com. That is more than double the 450,000 who were registered at the start of the year. To be able to browse Cheap Tickets' site of fares and timetables, users must provide a credit card number. The company buys blocks of tickets at low prices from airlines and resells them from ticket offices and via the the Internet.
In other news . . .
ST. LOUIS -- Charter Communications Inc., the cable-TV company owned by Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen, agreed to buy Falcon Cable Holdings for $3.6 billion in cash, stock and assumed debt to keep pace with the rapidly consolidating industry.