ADB meeting puts spotlight on Honolulu

By Michele Kayal
Advertiser Staff Writer

More than 3,000 bankers, government finance ministers and journalists will begin streaming into the Hawai'i Convention Center this week for the annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank.

Members of the ADBwatch launched their protest yesterday while crossing Kalakaua Avenue at the diamondhead end of Waikiki. Opponents accuse the Asian Development Bank of exploiting the poor and harming the environment. Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser

With not a single head of state expected to attend, the ADB meeting doesn't share the same prestige as the World Trade Organization's summit, which Honolulu bid hard for in 1998.

But the ADB brings the highest profile of any government meeting held in Hawai'i since the convention center opened, and it represents the state's first shot at proving it can handle such weighty international events.

"It's a huge conference to host," said Bernie Schraer, group publisher at Meetings and Conventions magazine. "It gives the destination immediate credibility."

Schraer and other convention professionals say the ADB is a resume builder for Hawai'i's meetings business that will showcase a new type of event for the convention center — the high-level ministerial meeting.

It also will telegraph the message that some of the world's most important people consider Hawai'i a viable place to do important business, despite its overwhelming image as a place to play in the sun and sand.

But with rewards also come risks. The 1999 meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle degenerated into a slugfest between police and some of the 30,000 protesters who came mainly from environmental and anti-globalization movements. Property damage and lost sales cost the city $8 million.

Police in Washington, D.C., arrested 1,300 people during last year's meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. And just two weeks ago, photos of police in gas masks during the Summit of the Americas in Quebec filled papers around the world.

Protesters expected

The ADB has stirred the ire of those who believe the bank approves loans that exploit the poor and harm the environment. At last year's meeting in Thailand, about 2,000 demonstrators blocked traffic and pushed over crowd-control barriers. At least as many protesters as delegates are expected for Honolulu's ADB meeting, but local officials say events outside the center are unlikely to outweigh events inside.

"I can't envision it being at all like Seattle," said Tony Vericella, who as head of the Hawai'i Visitors & Convention Bureau is the guardian of Hawai'i's international image.

"Even if something does occur, it would have to be worse than anything else prior has been for it to get any further recognition," he said. "And depending on what does occur and how the government and local law enforcement in the community react, that will determine whether there's a negative view of Hawai'i."

Now, joining the specter of protests, is a potential hotel workers strike that could shame the state in front of the delegates and the international media.

"Many of the people from the largest banking institutions in the world are accustomed to four- or five-star service, and I think if that is a problem, then it may affect how they think about Hawai'i," Gov. Ben Cayetano said.

Hawai'i's biggest hotel workers' union, the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Local 5 AFL-CIO, plans to stage a work stoppage tomorrow over contract disputes and could strike as early as Tuesday.

On Wednesday, the meeting's official opening day, as many as 5,000 demonstrators are scheduled to march from Magic Island to Kapi'olani Park, stopping for an hourlong rally in front of the convention center.

Demonstrators also will be allowed to stage activities throughout the five-day meeting at the entrance to the convention center and on the Ala Wai promenade, which runs behind the complex.

Preparations costly

Hawai'i has already spent roughly $3 million in state, municipal and private money to prepare for the meeting, with at least $500,000 going toward riot gear and other items for police.

Total costs, depending on the type of enforcement action needed, could run several million dollars more, according to some estimates. State security forces have also tried to prepare for any incidents by observing operations during last year's political conventions, and by talking with Seattle officials.

"The new complexion of disruption is something you have to be vigilant about, and they would expect you to handle it properly," said Bob Dallmeyer, chairman of the International Association for Exhibition Management. "You've been forewarned with Seattle."

In this case, the ADB's second-tier status on the scale of world events may also put it lower on protesters' radar than either the WTO or the Summit of the Americas. Several Mainland groups with ecological, globalization and human rights concerns that staged rallies during the WTO and other summits have already said they will not fly to Hawai'i for the ADB meeting.

Cultivating image

A successful ADB event will not deliver a fully formed business image to Hawai'i's visitor industry, meetings professionals said, but it could help advance the dual message of leisure and business travel the state has been trying to cultivate.

They say Hawai'i demonstrated its ability to handle large and logistically complicated groups like the 30,000-delegate American Dental Association in 1999. With the annual meeting of the Pacific Basin Economic Council last year it proved that it can comfortably host top executives.

The ADB would add another type of meeting to that list, they said, but it has no real direct stakes. For example, several groups considering Hawai'i for their meetings sent observers during the American Dental Association convention to monitor the event and determine whether Honolulu could handle their own. No specific government or international group is using the ADB meeting as a litmus test, Vericella and others said.

"This event is not more important than the dentists, but it's different," Schraer said. "It shows diversity, and the perception problem that it's purely a leisure destination and boondoggle can erode as more groups from more diverse areas bring their events to Hawai'i."

The weakness of Hawai'i's image as a viable business destination is precisely what cost it the World Trade Organization meeting two years ago. The group's site selection committee ranked Honolulu as its No. 1 choice for the meeting, citing its beautiful convention facility and airport.

But in the end, the group chose Seattle over Hawai'i because, as one State Department official said at the time, they wanted backdrops with "happy longshoremen talking about exporting widgets," an image they thought would give way to palm trees if they held the meeting in Hawai'i.

In a measure of poetic justice, the ADB event comes to Hawai'i courtesy of the protests that marred the WTO's Seattle gathering. This week's ADB meeting was originally scheduled for Seattle, but the group opted for Hawai'i after the WTO's experience there.

Honolulu to benefit

Whether the ADB event is violent or orderly, convention executives and local officials said they expect Honolulu will still benefit. Well-handled protests would offer Hawai'i an opportunity to prove it can host any meeting, no matter how controversial. Protests could also send a message that Hawai'i is an especially good place to discuss difficult topics, many said, which could bring more business.

"The more we can attract meetings that are addressing those types of issues that is exactly the way we can more quickly brand Hawai'i and diversify people's impressions of the state," Vericella said.

And, if the event does not go as well as state and city officials hope, if photos of rioting mobs hurling rocks at the glass walls of the $350 million convention center show up in newspapers around the world, experts said the dents in Hawai'i's image will be costly, but not permanent.

"You have three seconds to make a good impression, and it takes 30 minutes to undo a bad one," Dallmeyer said. "We still remember Seattle, and that was more than a couple of days ago. Is it going to ruin the meetings and conventions business there? Absolutely not. But it puts you in a negative light."