The September 11th attack
Feeling of unsafety keeps Japanese tourists away

By David Butts
Advertiser Staff Writer

OSAKA, Japan — On the third day of Gov. Ben Cayetano's trip to Japan last week, three male members of the group broke off to visit a Japanese lingerie company.

John Ka, who settled in Honolulu with his family after fleeing China in the aftermath of the Tiananmen massacre, says business has slowed considerably since Sept. 11. Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser

The company had just canceled a 5,000-person incentive tour to Waikiki in March for its sales leaders. Fishman, Schall and Matsuda went to the company to ask officials to reconsider. But they couldn't convince the company that its sales associates, who are mostly housewives, would be safe. The group will go to Tokyo Disneyland instead.

"They believe the family unit in Japan is afraid of international travel," said Fishman. The husbands, children and other relatives didn't want the housewives/sales associates to go, added Schall.

This is the challenge facing Hawai'i's travel industry. Mainland tourists are coming back after a steep drop-off caused by the terrorist attacks and now are already at about 80 percent of pre-Sept. 11 levels. But Japanese arrivals are still down about 40 percent from last year, sapping almost $4 million a day from the state's economy.

Leading the cancellations are the incentive tours and school trips, which had been growing segment for the Islands. Company presidents and school principals deciding where to take their employees or students will think about safety first. And for many Japanese that means staying at home. Package tours are not far behind. Individual travelers, including honeymooning couples, have been the most reluctant to cancel.

"Tour organizers try to avoid the risk," said Masako Shimada, head of sales in Western Japan for Aloha Airlines.

The drop-off in Japanese visitors since the Sept. 11 attacks has rippled through the economy, with more than 12,000 Hawai'i residents filing for unemployment benefits, the majority in travel-related industries. To bring back the jobs, the Japanese have to come back.

"The most important thing we learned this week is we need to fight the perception of fear," said Fishman. "How do we get the customers to believe it."

The 20-plus members of Cayetano's delegation, which went to Japan to try to do their best to bolster a key visitor market for the state, listened to dozens of Japanese tourism executives tell them that safety is the top concern, and they responded with the strongest assurances they could muster.

Cayetano repeatedly told his audiences that Hawai'i is "the safest state" in the United States, that the FBI has told him there are no signs of terrorist activity in the state and that the Federal Aviation Administration has given Hawai'i's airports the highest safety rating.

Perhaps the strongest statement was simply that Cayetano and his entourage made the trip to Japan the day the United States began its military strike against Afghanistan. But to make sure the point reached a wide audience, the Hawai'i Visitors & Convention Bureau, which organized the governor's tour, placed full-page advertisements in eight major Japanese daily newspapers at a cost to taxpayers of nearly $500,000. The ads' message: "Hawai'i is as it has always been."

Not everyone was convinced. "I see that ad and I think, 'They must be in really bad shape,'" said Hidekazu Aoki, a 46-year-old office worker from Aichi prefecture. "I think they should do a different campaign. Just say, 'Hawai'i is fun.'"

Still the Japanese travel executives who met with the Hawai'i group expressed unanimous appreciation for the governor's effort and in some cases said his trip paved the way for them to begin their own advertising campaigns to generate more travel to Hawai'i.

The governor and industry leaders will now shift their focus to offering Japanese travelers a "deal they cannot refuse," as Bob Coe, the president of DFS Hawai'i, puts it. They will launch a "Hawai'i

Value Pass" campaign with discounts for shopping, eating and visiting attractions to run from Nov. 1 to Jan. 31.

The Japanese travel companies, many hurting as much as Hawai'i companies, were quick to gobble up that inducement and ask for more.

"Could you extend the expiration to March 31, the end of the fiscal year in Japan?" asked Tatsuaki Kanda, a manager in Osaka from JTB, Japan's largest travel agency. His colleague, Sadao Hisamitsu, seizing an opportunity, said many tour groups are planning trips for April, May and beyond, and wondered whether the discounts could run through the summer.

Coe said he would have to consider their suggestions. After all, his DFS stores have already offered to provide discounts that could cost his company $10 million.

The package of discounts may convince some travelers like Yuu Okada, a 33-year-old Osaka resident, to speed up her trip. "I'm not worried about our plane crashing. I want to go, but I'm waiting for my friend's children to get older."

But her husband, Yoshimi Okada, 35, is beyond reach of any campaign. He said he got sick from something he ate on a trip to Thailand several years ago and will "never go overseas again."

The long horizon of many Japanese travelers and the nation's slowing economy may be among the biggest challenges to Hawai'i's tourism industry for many years to come.

Keiko Mukai, 30, and her boyfriend, Kiyoshi Tozawa, 31, were flipping through travel pamphlets at an Osaka shop last week while Cayetano was meeting with the chairman of a railroad at a hotel next door. The couple said they aren't afraid of flying now. But they are saving for a honeymoon trip, which won't come for two or three years.

Japanese, looking for a cheaper alternative to Hawai'i, the Mainland or Europe, made South Korea their top destination in 2000, while Japanese arrivals in Hawai'i slipped 0.4 percent last year.

Yo Tagawa, an All Nippon Airways planning manager, explained why Hawai'i is losing ground. A round-trip discount ticket from Japan to Hawai'i costs about $660. A ticket to Southeast Asia goes for $460, and Seoul is only $160. Tagawa added that many Asian resorts have newly constructed hotels with better amenities than some of the older Waikiki properties.

The seriousness of the situation was not lost on the seven executives of travel companies who took a week off to make the trip to Japan with Cayetano and the others.

Perry Sorenson, chief operating officer for Outrigger Hotels, said it bluntly: "Right now it's not about profit. It's about staying alive. Our concern currently is to regain business and remain viable."

That's why Hilton's Schall was willing to pay $300 for a taxi ride to a lingerie company. And when the company turned down his request that it reconsider canceling its incentive trip to Hawai'i, what was his next step?

"We pleaded with them to at least move the group to 2003," Schall said. The Japanese company was noncommittal.