The Hawaii Tourism Authority's (HTA) 2010 marketing plan will focus heavily on attracting meetings and incentives business, from North America as well as East Asia, reports local business journal
Pacific Business News.
The marketing plan, which was announced last week, is a response to Hawaii's declining visitor numbers, which have fallen considerably this year as a result of the down economy, as well as public criticism of meetings and events in so-called "luxury" destinations.
In order to stimulate short-term bookings that can fill the gap, HTA domestically plans to embrace a marketing model in which it blankets an entire city or region with messaging. It executed a similar strategy in San Francisco this spring, and is currently doing the same thing in Los Angeles; because it said it's seen positive results, similar campaigns are planned along the west coast next year in Seattle, Portland and Vancouver.
Internationally, HTA has its sights set on Japan, Korea and China, where it will target visitors via social media, travel agents and travel wholesalers.
In pursuit of more meetings and incentives business, HTA plans more collaborative marketing between itself, the HTA-funded Hawaii Visitors & Convention Bureau (HVCB) and SMG Hawaii, which operates the Hawaii Convention Center. While HVCB will actively court meetings and incentives business from Asia—last week it debuted online meeting guides for meeting planners in Japan, Korea, China and Taiwan, available at
www.businessaloha.com—SMG will continue marketing Hawaii to American associations, which represent 80 percent of bookings at the Hawaii Convention Center.