Posted on: Thursday, July 8, 2004

EDITORIAL
Tourism board must balance stakeholders

Govs. Linda Lingle and Ben Cayetano have diametrically opposed views as to who should sit on the Hawai'i Tourism Authority board, and they're both right.

Lingle says the board should stress expertise in the tourism industry, while Cayetano maintained that a board dominated by the hotels tends to feather its own nest at the expense of the broader visitor industry and the public at large.

Both views have merit and illustrate the difficulty of achieving the right balance on the board — the right mix of stakeholder representation, if you will — to make it a dynamic and effective force in a brutally competitive business.

At one extreme is a board amateurishly micromanaged by outsiders or lawmakers who think, for example, it's smart to spend big bucks to put tourism messages on one of the cars competing in Mainland drag races.

On the other extreme would be a board dominated by hotels tempted to improve their bottom lines by using public money to supplement their normal marketing expenses.

Cayetano tried to make the board more responsive to the overall visitor industry and less attentive to the demands of the hotels, while Lingle "wanted to do the opposite of that. I wanted people on there who clearly had experience in the visitor industry."

In particular, Lingle objected to Cayetano appointments like outgoing board chairman Mike McCartney, whose day job is to run Hawai'i Public Television, and "a couple of other people who really didn't have the day-to-day hands-on experience in the visitor industry."

In her latest appointments, Lingle replaced McCartney and Keith Vieira, senior vice president of Starwood Hotels, whose terms were expiring, with the general manager of the Hotel Hana-Maui and Starwood's regional director of sales and marketing. Are we seeing establishment of a permanent, rotating Starwood seat on the board?

Certainly no one has a greater legitimate interest than the hotels in spending the HTA's $60 million annual budgets, since it comes from a tax on their rooms.

But by law the HTA's charter is to "create a vision and long-range plan for tourism, and administer tourism from a statewide perspective."

And because the actual work is contracted out to specialized marketers like the Hawai'i Visitors and Convention Bureau, we think a broader mix of akamai, public-spirited board members is important.

The HTA's charter enjoins it to "develop, coordinate, and implement state policies and directions for tourism and related activities taking into account the economic, social and physical impacts of tourism on the state and its natural resources infrastructure."

That's too broad a mandate to be entrusted to hoteliers alone.