Business Briefs

Reported by Star-Bulletin staff & wire

Friday, July 16, 1999

EU decision seen
hurting Pacific tourism

SUVA, Fiji -- A European Union decision to stop granting foreign aid to promote tourism would damage South Pacific economies that rely heavily on the industry, officials warned today.

The main tourism body for a dozen Pacific countries fears the EU decision will strip its member nations of almost all the funds they spend internationally on advertising and promotion as travel destinations.

Levani Tuinabua, chief executive of the Tourism Council of the South Pacific, said the new policy might work in the Caribbean and Africa, but failed to take into account the isolation and smaller size of Pacific nations.

The European Union announced last November that tourism marketing and promotion would not qualify for foreign aid under the Lome Convention.

Funds previously earmarked for tourism are to be switched to "humane resource development," private sector assistance and environmental preservation.

Business up 7.3% at Hawaiian Air

Hawaiian Airlines Inc. said today that it carried 488,508 passengers in June, a 7.3 percent increase from the 455,253 it carried in June 1998. The airline, which flies mainland-Hawaii and Hawaii-South Pacific routes in addition to its interisland service, said it increased its capacity by adding more flights. It had 518.1 million available seat miles last month, an 11 percent increase from 466.9 million in June 1998.

Revenue passenger miles rose 9.6 percent to 426.8 million in June from 389.4 million in the previous June. A revenue passenger mile is one paying passenger carried one mile. The result was a decrease in the airline's systemwide passenger load factor -- the percentage of available seats occupied by revenue passengers -- to 82.4 percent from 83.4 percent in June 1998. For the first half of 1999, Hawaiian had 2.76 million passengers, up 7.1 percent from 2.58 million in the first half of 1998, and a passenger load factor of 76.3 percent, up from 75.1 percent.

Jamba Juice opens three isle locations

Jamba Juice Co., a San Francisco-based smoothie and juice retailer, has opened three Hawaii stores. The outlets are in Kahala Mall, Kailua Village Shops and Pearlridge Center. Established in 1990, Jamba Juice has more than 250 locations on the mainland, mostly in Western states with new stores scheduled to open in Chicago, Texas and Washington, D.C. The Hawaii joint venture, called JJC Hawaii LLC, is a partnership between Jamba Juice and a unit of Coffee Hawaii Partners, which owns and operates Hawaii's Starbucks Coffee stores.

EPA fines Safeway for dumping milk

SAN FRANCISCO -- Here's some spilt milk worth crying over.

Federal officials announced yesterday that the Safeway Inc. supermarket chain had agreed to pay a $200,000 fine to resolve charges that it poured 10,500 gallons of spoiled milk down California storm drains. "We want to send a message that it is both wrong and harmful to make illegal dumps . . . whether the thing dumped is oil or milk," said Felicia Marcus, regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA said that Safeway in 1996 instructed store managers to destroy a shipment of milk, but gave them no instructions on how do it.