Lingle names 2 to tourism board
By Kelly Yamanouchi
Advertiser Staff Writer
Gov. Linda Lingle appointed two hotel executives to the Hawai'i Tourism Authority board yesterday, saying she believes in putting people with tourism industry experience on the panel.
Yesterday Lingle named Douglas Kahikina Chang, general manager of the Hotel Hana-Maui and president of the Native Hawaiian Hospitality Association, and Cheryl Williams, regional director of sales and marketing for Starwood Hotels & Resorts Hawai'i, to the Tourism Authority board.
The appointments, which expire June 30, 2008, will be up for confirmation by the state Senate in the next legislative session.
Chang and Williams replace Mike McCartney, Tourism Authority board chairman and president and chief executive of PBS Hawaii, and Keith Vieira, senior vice president of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Hawai'i, whose terms expired.
Lingle said the selections represent a move in an opposite direction from her predecessor, Ben Cayetano.
When Cayetano was governor he said, "What has dominated the HTA over its short life has been this mentality, spawned mostly by the hotel people, that whatever is good for the hotels is good for tourism, and that's not necessarily the case because there are larger goals that we have for tourism."
He sought to overhaul the board to try to make it more responsive to the overall visitor industry and less attentive to the demands of hotels.
Lingle said Cayetano had on the 15-member tourism board "Mike McCartney (and) had a couple of other people who really didn't have the day-to-day hands on experience in the visitor industry."
"I wanted to do the opposite of that. I wanted people on there who clearly had experience in the visitor industry," Lingle said. The Tourism Authority's $60 million a year budget "is a lot of public funds to be entrusted with and for us to maximize the return on all that money it just makes common sense to me that you would put people on who have day-to-day experience."
Lingle also said, "It was a false argument to say if they're in the industry and they're experienced and have great backgrounds, they therefore will not represent the broader community, don't have a feel of the broader community. I don't think that's true. I think it can be both, and in these people we have both of these things."
