Editorial
International meetings will pay off in the end

It's interesting to hear Seattle officials talking now about how they wouldn't touch hosting a meeting like this week's Asian Development Bank conference with a 10-foot pole.

That's because of the rioting that broke out when they hosted the World Trade Organization ministerial meeting in 1999. It tarnished Seattle's image and cost them a bundle, as well.

Before the rioting broke out, though, Seattle wanted that meeting badly, and got pretty smug about landing it, having barely edged out Honolulu's bid.

We were grumbling that the loss might have been, as we are wont to say, "juiced." The site-selection team had favored Honolulu because of its "new, state-of-the-art Convention Center," but had been overruled by the Clinton White House.

Indeed, it all came down to political hardball.The White House needed a vote from one of Washington's senators. But that's water over the dam.

Hawai'i learned some important lessons that year. For one thing, the loss of the WTO meeting served as a healthy lesson that we had to work smarter and better. There's a host of top-flight, cutthroat competition in the convention business, and we're bound to lose some of the big plums — sometimes for reasons that aren't strictly fair.

We also learned from Seattle the price of being unprepared. It wasn't as if there was no warning. Saying he was busing in tens of thousands of union members, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney had called for a "confrontation in Seattle."

Seattle officials now are talking about what a disaster the WTO meeting was and how glad they aren't hosting anything else like it.

According to a report by Advertiser staff writer Johnny Brannon, the rioting cost Seattle and surrounding suburbs $13 million, not including several lawsuits still pending for alleged police brutality.

And, they complain, the feds only reimbursed them for $5 million.

The cost to our state and city governments of the ADB conference isn't toted up yet, but it's probably less than half of what Seattle spent. Officials believe spending by the 3,000 ADB delegates alone will more than make up for it. It's cheaper to be prepared.

There's a chance the feds won't reimburse Hawai'i a penny for the ADB meeting. That would be pretty short-sighted of the Treasury Department because the ADB meeting isn't the last meeting of its sort this country will have to host, and the days of cities competing for the honor are gone.

Wednesday's protest march showed that unless the AFL-CIO is willing to fly in tens of thousands of demonstrators at, say, $300 a pop, Honolulu is pretty sure to be a secure site for such meetings. Whether you think our local residents are mellow or apathetic, it's pretty clear that we lack the intensity or the numbers to reproduce the broken glass and tear gas experience of Seattle, Davos, Chieng Mai or Quebec.

So such meetings will be back. But next time, we'll be holding most of the cards.