The September 11th attack | America strikes back
$100 bonuses help enrich Waikiki
By Susan Hooper
Advertiser Staff Writer
As Hawai'i's tourism crisis has deepened, businesses have responded in a variety of ways. Some have asked their employees to take vacations as a way of avoiding layoffs. Others are cutting costs by opening a little later each day and closing a little earlier. Still others are lowering prices in hopes of wooing hesitant customers.
Gregory Yamamoto • The Honolulu Advertiser
Now a group of Hawai'i executives has come up with a novel plan to aid the struggling visitor industry: They're arming their employees with $100 each and telling them to play tourist in Waikiki.
Derek Kojiro, left, and Andy Abalos, middle, concrete repairmen for Williams & Associates in Waipahu, each received $100 to be spent in Waikiki from company president Jim Williams, right, to help spur the local economy.
"Here is the major source of our economy hurting badly when the rest of us have not been affected as severely," said Jim Williams, vice president of the Honolulu Executives Association, an organization of 125 business owners and executive managers promoting the idea under the slogan "Business Helping Business: The $100 Plan."
"We want to get to the core of the problem and try to replace those missing tourists with local people funded by their employer to spend money in the visitor industry," he said.
Hawai'i's tourism industry has been in desperate straits since the Sept. 11 attacks, which involved the hijackings of four commercial jets and led to thousands of deaths. The catastrophe has caused travelers to postpone or cancel Hawai'i vacations, and their absence has meant millions of dollars in lost revenue and caused widespread layoffs in tourism companies throughout the Islands.
News of the $100 Plan is spreading through word of mouth, Williams said, with each member of the Honolulu Executives Association asking other business leaders not only to participate but to pass the word to at least three other companies.
Williams estimates that if 30 percent of Oahu's employers participate, the $100 Plan could infuse as much as $25 million to $30 million into Waikiki in the next 60 days.
About 40 businesses are on board already, Williams said. Those who are feeling the pinch themselves, he said, may choose to give less than $100 to their employees or decide on a different approach, such as taking all their workers on a dinner cruise. He is also hoping the concept spreads to businesses on the Neighbor Islands.
The owner of the specialty contracting firm Williams & Associates in Waipahu, Williams gave his 30 employees their $100 each last Tuesday, with these strings attached: The money must be spent in the next two weeks; it must be spent in Waikiki at a restaurant, hotel or shop; and employees must bring back receipts and say where they spent the money.
The idea to use employees to pump cash back into Hawai'i's economy may have more support than Williams realizes. Kevin Takaki, customer service manager at CHART Rehabilitation of Hawai'i, said the physical therapy clinic's president, Frieda Takaki, is giving each of her 30 employees $100, with a recommendation to spend it in the Waikiki area.
Kevin Takaki said that, as far as he knows, his boss — who is no relation to him — came up with the idea on her own.
"It just came from her heart," he said. "She just saw how our economy has changed after this one day."
Tom Crowley, a lawyer in private practice in Honolulu, signed on to the $100 Plan after being buttonholed by Williams. Crowley has only one employee, but he has already given her $100, and he intends to spend another $100 in Waikiki himself.
"Here in Hawai'i, small businesses especially have known hard economic times over the last 10 years, and this tragedy piled on top of the last hard 10 years will make it especially tough to hang in there," Crowley said. "And those of us who live here don't automatically say, 'Let's go into Waikiki tonight.' But this reminds us that we are more connected than we usually are aware of, and we do need to help each other out in our island economy."
Aria St. John, Crowley's legal assistant, said she plans to spend her $100 shopping at NikeTown in Waikiki.
"I was thinking of how I could do something fun with the money," she said. "And also, especially in light of the (Sept. 11 attacks), I want to create that feeling that we're still out there prosperous and spending money and keeping our economy alive by supporting each other, in Hawai'i particularly, because we're so affected by it."
