HVCB to spend $1.4M to host meeting planners
By Katherine Nichols
Advertiser Staff Writer
As part of a continuing push to bring in new convention and travel business, the Hawai'i Visitors & Convention Bureau will spend nearly $1.4 million for a group of influential meeting planners next August who the bureau hopes will help bring in as many as 30 more convention bookings.
Advertiser library photo • May 11, 2001
The American Society of Association Executives, comprised primarily of the heads of professional associations, such as the American Diabetes Association and the National Association of Counties, will have its annual meeting at the Hawai'i Convention Center in August 2003. About 5,500 people will attend and could bring more than $14 million into the state.
At least 63 people, including Gov. Ben Cayetano, will travel to Denver to lure more members of The American Society of Association Executives to the group's annual meeting at the Hawai'i Convention Center, above, next August.
More important than the numbers related to that convention, however, is that many of those visitors make the decisions about where their professional associations have their own annual gatherings. The bureau hopes that by meeting here the group will add 30 more conventions booked in Hawai'i within two years following the meeting and an extra $240 million in revenues for the state.
But for Hawai'i to reap the benefits, the attendees must have a good experience. And that is part of what the $1.4 million is paying for.
As future host, the bureau is obligated to sponsor events at the end of this month in Denver, where the association executives are meeting this year. At least 63 people, including Gov. Ben Cayetano, staff from the bureau's Neighbor Island chapters, bureau members, cultural entertainers and a keiki halau will travel to Colorado and take part in a luncheon, trade show and dinner in an effort to boost attendance in Hawai'i.
Major "perception-changing events" like this — where meeting planners begin to see Hawai'i as a serious business destination — are worth the expense, said Sandra Moreno, the bureau's vice president for meetings, conventions and incentives. Getting them to Hawai'i for a convention is essential. "They don't believe you (that Hawai'i is anything but sand and surf) otherwise," she said. "They hold on to their old perceptions."
Alhough conventions have brought in an estimated $2.4 billion in visitor spending, how and when the payoffs will occur is hard to measure.
"It's always an unknown," said Chuck Gee, international tourism consultant and dean emeritus of the University of Hawai'i School of Travel Industry Management.
"You don't know if it's going to be an expense or an investment."
The push to attract groups that will create a ripple effect in the meetings market began when the Hawai'i Tourism Authority announced its goal to increase expenditures from meetings, conventions and incentives from 15 percent of total visitor expenditures in 2000 to 30 percent by 2005.
Despite new priorities, the bureau's entire meetings, conventions and incentives budget is $8 million per year. This compares with $37 million devoted to the leisure market.
Particularly influential groups that the bureau has attracted include Meeting Professionals International, which met at the Hawai'i Convention Center in January, and The American Society of Travel Agents, arriving in November.
The travel agents' convention will cost the bureau and private companies nearly $2 million, according to Tony Vericella, the bureau's president and chief executive officer.
The cost to lure the meeting professionals was significantly less, but already nine conventions have been booked as a result, Moreno said.
