Tourism Talk
It's time for visitor industry to shake up its comfort zone
By Michele Kayal
Advertiser Staff Writer
Rice and gravy. Rubber slippers. Christmas with the Cazimeros. Japanese visitors.
Could anything possibly link them?
They're all about comfort.
The rice and gravy is fine the way it is (though the Surgeon General might disagree), but with Hawai'i's Asian visitors it's time to start pushing the comfort zone.
Hawai'i is used to its Japanese visitors. It is comfortable with them. It knows what to expect. And it has come to rely on them like a favorite auntie. But that strategy has become riskier every year as their numbers fumble, the yen stumbles, and Japan's traveling population discovers new destinations. They are branching out, and so must Hawai'i.
Don't misunderstand. Japanese visitors are still Hawai'i's second-largest group of visitors after Mainlanders. At 1.8 million a year, their numbers are almost double all other international visitors combined. As a group, they spend more than all other international visitors combined.
They have been steadfast, loyal guests, who love the Islands, and Hawai'i should continue to court and honor them.
But it's time to face facts: it's not going to be the way it was. The number of Japanese visitors to Hawai'i is way off the 1997 peak of 2.2 million, and each new figure reminds us of that. April, down 7.5 percent. Year to date, down 3 percent. Over the years, a weaker yen has sent peripatetic Japanese to less expensive places like Korea and Guam, and it has whet their appetites for new destinations, new cultures. Perhaps for the Japanese, Hawai'i has become a bit too much like rice and gravy: comfortable, but not that exciting.
Hawai'i cannot keep waiting for them to come back. Waiting for them to spend more. Pining for them as for a long lost love. Has anyone seen "The Way We Were"?
It's time to start devoting more energy — both financial and mental — to new Asian markets.
Some tourism soothsayers predict the Chinese and Korean markets will together be bigger than the Japanese market in the next decade or two. Those countries of course have intricate political and visa issues, but the desire to visit Hawai'i certainly appears to be there.
Before the Asian financial crisis, Korea sent about 120,000 visitors a year to Hawai'i, and those numbers are beginning to creep back up. In the first nine months of 2000, Korean visitors to Hawai'i grew more than 50 percent over 1999. Chinese visitors were up 40 percent to about 25,000. Hong Kong visitors were up 13 percent. Taiwan visitors fell.
Tourism executives, to their credit, are somewhat on top of this. The Hawai'i Visitors and Convention Bureau got back yesterday from Korea's annual travel trade show. It will open its one and only international office in September — in Beijing. And for years, literally, the bureau and the governor's office have bugged Cathay Pacific to start a non-stop flight between here and Hong Kong.
Local entrepreneurs are also looking further east. Publisher Ted Sturdivant is traveling through Asia launching new pocket-sized Hawai'i guidebooks in Korean and Chinese that travel agents will give to clients. Others are also casting their glances that way.
But along with these efforts must also come an attitude adjustment. Hawai'i needs to begin thinking of these places as the markets of the future, not as supplements to the Japanese market, pesky, small-take suppliers that fill in the blanks.
There may only be 100,000 of them, and the surge in their numbers may be 20 years away. But the industry needs to begin putting these folks "top of mind." That means getting to know about them. Some consultants have even suggested catering to them with signs, language and other efforts to make them feel welcome.
Otherwise, when they do get here, it may be too late.
