Hawaii expects
7.2M visitors
this year

Hawaii's visitor arrivals are expected rise 2.7 percent to a record 7.2 million this year, according to preliminary state targets.

Visitor expenditures, which reached an all-time high of $10.3 billion in 2004, are also expected to grow 4.3 percent to just more than $11 billion. Actual goals are expected to be set at the next board meeting of the state Hawaii Tourism Authority on March 10.

Meanwhile, the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau thinks the best way to take the state's visitor image beyond sun, sand and surf is to let local residents do the talking.

The bureau's expanded marketing campaign, "People of Hawaii," features real people ranging from a flight attendant enjoying the surf to a longtime kamaaina taking a spiritual walk through the woods. Old marketing buzzwords have been replaced with natural beauty, diversity and aloha.

The bureau, a nonprofit organization contracted by the state to bolster domestic tourism in Hawaii, has gone on the road to ask potential tourists from key markets such as San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas and Los Angeles what would entice them to choose the state.

They've also strolled the streets of Waikiki to ask visitors what inspired them to come.

Since the state began using local ambassadors to convey the message that Hawaii is a unique visitor destination to North American consumers, domestic visitors arrivals have rebounded to record levels, said Jay Talwar, vice president of marketing for the visitors bureau.

"We found the best way to communicate aloha is to let the people of Hawaii talk," Talwar said. He presented the campaign yesterday along with several of his colleagues to the Hawaii Advertising Federation, a 140-member trade organization.

"We studied plenty of marketing campaigns and discovered that with the right photography, the right lighting and the right time of day, almost any place can look beautiful, even Detroit," Talwar said.

Hawaii's warm people are as big an advantage as the state's warm climate, he said.

That's why the bureau's multimedia campaign features kamaaina ambassadors in print ads, television spots and in online formats, said George Chalelian, of Milici Valenti Ng Pack, the bureau's ad agency.

"We went out into the community through HVCB and our friends and family and got 60 videotapes of people telling their stories," Chalelian said.

Once the stories were collected, marketers "threw out everything that didn't give us chicken skin" and made several 23-second advertisements, he said.

Record domestic visitor arrivals and recovering growth from the international markets propelled the state's total air arrivals for 2004 to 6.9 million, an 8.3 percent increase over 2003, but shy of the record 6.95 million in 2000.