Reported by Star-Bulletin staff & wire
Friday, November 12, 1999
Forum to examine conventions, expos
International expositions expert Chuck Schwartz and Hawaii Visitors & Convention Bureau Vice President Sandra Butler-Moreno will be the speakers at a convention industry marketing forum from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. Wednesday in Tapa Ballroom 1 at the Hilton Hawaiian Village.Schwartz heads PGI Exhibitions, with offices in 20 cities and four foreign countries, and has produced expositions and conventions in Europe, Mexico and Asia as well as the United States. He will discuss the importance of trade shows to conventions. He is also is chairman of the International Association for Exposition Management, whose Hawaii chapter is sponsoring the meeting along with the HVCB and the Hilton Hawaiian Village. Butler-Moreno heads the HVCB's meetings, conventions and incentives department. The forum fee is $35 in advance, $45 at the door. For more information call 261-3400.
Rite Aid may sell up to 1,000 stores
CAMP HILL, Pa. -- Rite Aid Corp. may sell more of its 1,000 drugstores on the West Coast as the company seeks to raise cash, slash $4.5 billion in debt and revive a stock that's dropped 86 percent this year. The third-largest U.S. drugstore chain already sold 38 West Coast stores and last month said it may sell as many as 350. Rite Aid is considering selling another 650 as it seeks to raise about $2.5 billion from store sales, the Wall Street Journal reported today.
Boston Globe refuses to print tobacco ads
BOSTON -- The Boston Globe, a unit of the New York Times Co., has become one of a small number of U.S. newspapers to ban advertisements for tobacco products. Tobacco ads account for less than 1 percent of the Globe's ad revenue, a dollar amount "much less than seven figures," Globe spokesman Richard Gulla said yesterday. Relatively few U.S. newspapers now reject tobacco product ads, the Globe said. Among those that will not accept such ads are the New York Times, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Christian Science Monitor, and Seattle Times.