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Business Briefs

Reported by Star-Bulletin staff & wire

Tuesday, August 1, 2000

Regal Travel buys Felix's agency

Regal Travel Inc., which has 13 retail travel agency offices in Hawaii, has acquired one more, A Touch of Class Travel at 1585 Kapiolani Blvd. City Councilman John Henry Felix, who owned A Touch of Class, will stay on as a special associate and the office will be renamed Regal Travel in a few weeks, said Raymond Miyashiro, Regal's president. Founded in 1974, Regal Travel has 85 employees and grosses more than $40 million in annual sales. It is part of International Management Services Inc., a locally owned firm that also runs Trans Hawaiian Transportation, Destination Services, Bargain Tickets and Sure Shot Hawaii.

Building contracts down in Hawaii

The value of Hawaii construction permits written in June for future projects totaled $110.8 million, down 21 percent from $140 million in contracts written in June 1999, according to the F.W. Dodge Division of the McGraw-Hill Companies, which monitors construction nationwide.

Residential contracts were up 24 percent year over year at $57.4 million from $46.3 million in the previous June. Nonbuilding contracts, for work such as roads, bridges and airports, were up 225 percent at $27.3 million from a year-earlier $8.4 million. But June contracts in the nonresidential category, such as commercial buildings, fell 69 percent to $26.2 million, from $85.3 million in the previous June. Contracts for Hawaii work through the first half of 2000 totaled $688.2 million, down 24 percent from $901.2 million in the first half of 1999.

Sugar growers urged to destroy crops

A growing U.S. sugar glut led the government to propose today that farmers plow under part of this year's crop to cut supply, raise prices, and avoid government purchases of their product. The Agriculture Department, in an unprecedented step for the industry, proposed that the nation's 12,000 beet farmers voluntarily destroy some of the acres they planted this year, in exchange for certificates for government-owned sugar, Bloomberg News reported.