---

Putting a price
on Hawaii

SPORTS tourism. Everybody talks about it. It's reached buzzword status now. Jeremy Harris threw it around. Pro Bowl boosters use it to justify big contracts. Youth tournaments belt it out like a rallying cry.

What the heck are all these people talking about?

Luckily, yesterday, there was a panel discussion on the subject sponsored by the local chapter of the Travel and Tourism Research Association.

We'll get to the bottom of this.

The first guy on the panel was Michael Story, the newly hired person for the newly created position of sports events manager for the Hawaii Tourism Authority. He also informed us that the HTA has formed a sports investigative committee to study this stuff. It met for the first time in March.

Good. This stuff needs to be studied. Because so far it seems the state's sports-tourism strategy has been pretty simple: Give the Pro Bowl a lot of money.

But as the good people at the Honolulu Marathon would tell you, there are other events that can (and in the marathon's case, already do), if properly cultivated, bring home lots of that sports-tourism cash. Story's charts agree. He points to four kinds of events.

Icon events are Super Bowls, World Cups, Olympics. We don't have any of those. Next, championship events -- big-time athletes and the game on TV. Pro Bowl, big golf, Ironman. Attendance events -- people come here to play ... and stay (and spend). "Very high economic impact," Story said. And commodity events -- canoes, surf, ski. Stuff like that.

Some are a combination. The marathon has 20,000-something visitors running alongside (for about 6 seconds) elite pros.

The key seems to be taking advantage -- where and if you can -- of each. Not leaving opportunity on the table.

Create the right mix for you -- TV events to put palm trees in mainland living rooms and attendance events to put money on our streets -- and you've created sports tourism's dream team.

"The main purpose of the investigative committee is to develop a strategy at the state level for sports," Story said.

They're still working out a lot of the details, trying to figure out what Hawaii could go for, should go for, what this committee will do. Story doesn't seem sure about anything yet. That's fine. Just asking these questions is bold, exciting, new. This could pay off big.

Next was the attendance-events expert, Michelle Nagamine. She's the girls soccer coach at Kamehameha and she's done sporting goods and club teams and she knows her stuff. She was hit over the head with sports tourism's potential on a trip to New Orleans when she ran into a kickball convention.

That sounded fun. But then the guys told her that there were 5,000 of them, all staying in town at once, and they played their games in the Superdome.

Hotels. Restaurants. Superdome rent.

Oh, my.

"As a state we have long been criticized for going after only these very high profile more icon events," Nagamine said. "When really there are so many other facets to the sports tourism puzzle. I for one believe that we need events like the Pro Bowl. But I also for another believe that we need (attendance events). One event with 250 teams, on a personal level for a hotel company, could generate close to $250,000 in revenue off the sheer depth from your sports teams."

And that's Nagamine's day job. Fill those rooms with teams. She's the director of sports marketing and sales for Outrigger Hotels & Resorts.

And she's having a great time putting all her old experiences together, finding out exactly how much potential there is.

One of the best aspects of sports tourism is this: People already want to come to Hawaii. Sports can be the last straw. "Let's give them another excuse," Nagamine said. You're selling "economical vacationing."

"Lifestyle sports and golf are great motivators for people to come to Hawaii," panel member Tom Kiely said.

Of course, none of this is easy. It's more than just attracting an event, more than just putting a plan on paper, more than just putting out a bid or writing out a check.

This new committee would probably help out on all those other details, too.

"If you're going to have a 250-team tournament, who the heck is going to put up the tents and line the field? Who is going to ref the games? Who is going to make sure the concessions and rest rooms are operating and clean?" Nagamine said. All this is part of what needs to be done.

"Community involvement can't be understated," Story said.

So there we have it. It sounds good. It sounds like the state may just start to take a look at more than just the Pro Bowl and golf. And that could mean more money.

Yes, sports tourism is bowl games and big events and palm trees on TV. But it is not only that. Nagamine remembers an event that "had a $16 million impact on this state."

"And that was one soccer tournament," she said.