[ OUR OPINION ]
Let visitors bureau continue
to market convention centerLEGISLATION initiated this year in a late-session House-Senate conference has created a potential crisis in the marketing of the Hawaii Convention Center for large gatherings. The legislation resulted from a state senator's disappointment about how the center has been marketed. Next year's Legislature should act promptly to lessen the damage.
THE ISSUE The Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau's state contract to market the Hawaii Convention Center is due to expire at the end of this year.
Sen. Donna Mercado Kim, chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Tourism and Intergovernmental Affairs, introduced the provision that reassigned the Hawaii Tourism Authority's contract marketing the Convention Center from the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau, a nonprofit visitor-industry organization, to SMG, a Philadelphia-based company that operates the Convention Center. Kim has pointed out that HVCB, for $4 million a year, brings in only 20 percent of the center's bookings while SMG, which the Tourism Authority pays only $200,000 to handle smaller bookings, brings in the remainder.
"We wanted an entity that lived and breathed the Convention Center, that their whole objective was to fill the Convention Center, and that was their main livelihood," Kim says. In addition, she contends that HVCB markets Hawaii's "sand and surf" for purposes of tourism, conflicting with marketing Hawaii to industry groups as "a good place to do business."
HVCB emphasizes that its convention marketing efforts are intended to attract major national or international conventions, which generate 90 percent of the Convention Center's revenue. SMG is assigned to handle local bookings and those scheduled 13 months or less in advance, which consist of small- to medium-sized functions that are far less lucrative. While more numerous, these functions, ranging from wedding receptions to the annual auto show, basically serve as filler between major convention bookings.
Most convention centers nationally are marketed to large organizations by visitor bureaus because they are ideally suited to handle related chores, including transportation, hotel availability, shipping and labor costs, entertainment venues and other services. HVCB's marketing of the center from July 1996 through June of this year cost $19.7 million. It resulted in 196 major convention bookings, $2.45 billion in visitor spending, $203 million in state tax revenues and nearly 1.8 million hotel room nights, according to the bureau.
The Kim provision calls for HVCB's contract to market the Convention Center to expire at the end of this year. SMG's management contract runs through next June. According to Rick Humphreys, former executive director of the Tourism Authority, the agency may have the flexibility for HVCB to continue its marketing activities through the first six months of next year while SMG completes its management contract. That would provide time for the Legislature to give full consideration to the proposal and put marketing of the Convention Center back where it belongs.
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Quit the political sniping
and focus on real issuesL INDA Lingle has admitted that she was wrong in issuing a "too political" press release from the Maui County mayor's office while running for governor four years ago. Governor Cayetano has not confessed to unethical conduct in assigning state employees to analyze Lingle's current gubernatorial campaign platform. That standoff is not likely to change, so candidates should focus on issues that voters care most about.
THE ISSUEThe ethics of using state resources for political purposes continues to be debated in the campaign for governor.
Cayetano was chastised for eliciting an assessment from the state tax director that Lingle's tax proposals would cost the state $428 million in revenue over four years and force most state departments to cut spending by 28 percent. Lingle chastised Cayetano for ordering state employees to conduct the analysis on state time. Cayetano responded by saying that Lingle used county stationery while mayor of Maui County to issue a highly political press release.
The ethical issues, while justified, are trivial compared with the content of Lingle's proposed "New Beginning for Hawaii" and Tax Director Marie Okamura's analysis. Lingle calls the assessment "false" and "dishonest," but she is unable to estimate the effect of her proposals on the state's budget. "The state budget is just so unknowable to us," Lingle says.
Okamura regards Lingle's proposed elimination of the 4.16 percent general excise tax on medical services and products as a revenue loss. "I see it as the public getting to keep more of their own money that they will then spend in the economy," Lingle says, "and I see it as an economic generator, not as something of a loss."
Lingle talks of changing Hawaii's antibusiness reputation with such economic stimuli. "I know over time changing our reputation is the most important thing that we can do," she says. "Right now, no one wants to invest here because they don't think they'll be treated fairly." The question is how she will balance a budget while waiting for investors to respond to those stimuli.
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Published by Oahu Publications Inc., a subsidiary of Black Press.Don Kendall, Publisher
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