Posted on: Sunday, December 16, 2001

Editorial
We must be smart to win back Japan travel

For the segment of Hawai'i's tourist industry that relies on travel from Japan, the months since Sept. 11 have been nothing short of a disaster.

Travel from the Mainland to the Islands has bounced back to levels close to pre-Sept. 11. But not so Japanese tourism. Arrivals are down 46 percent.

Japanese travelers, who are famed for their high-spending ways, are shunning us. Hawai'i wants to change that picture fast.

Are they doing enough?

No, says a top executive with Japan Airlines. At a recent conference, he criticized Hawai'i's tourist industry for not keeping up with trends and warned that if the Islands fail to act the decline will worsen.

Yes, said a hotel executive, saying it is responding to the changing tastes of Japanese visitors.

The conference came up with three solutions: a sports series over 12 months that will involve Japanese amateurs, a web site with information on security in Hawai'i and manuals in Japanese explaining how to cope with illness or accidents in Hawai'i.

Nothing wrong with those efforts, but we are left wondering if that's all there is.

This state and the tourist industry need to take a much harder and more critical look at what we are offering if they want to turn around their fortunes.

We need to listen — and listen good — to what Japanese travelers say about us.

It is a remarkable irony that one of the knocks made on Hawai'i in that conference is that it is too Japanized. A state that has worked hard to cater to a valuable segment of its market gets dissed for doing its job too well.

But there may be something to that. In our efforts to cater to the Japanese traveler have we forgotten why it is that people want to come to Hawai'i? Tourists don't travel thousands of miles to feel like they never left home.

Only one in 10 Japanese visitors goes to the Neighbor Islands. That is one obvious way to make Hawai'i fresh again and unique for Japanese travelers.

The city has made huge strides in improving the look of Waikiki, but more is needed to improve a resort area getting tired around the edges.

Let's hope that a serious lesson is learned as we struggle through our current downturn. If we want the tourists to return we need to do more than web pages and brochures on safety. It will take a concerted effort by the state, the city and the counties and the tourist industry to make fixes in our resort infrastructure where needed, understand the mindset of today's Japanese traveler and go back to a Hawai'i that is Hawai'i and not a place trying to feel like Las Vegas or Tokyo.