Advanced Media Marketing - PMG International
Tuesday,
August 26, 2008 - 4:34 PM HAST
Governor Linda Lingle Wants $10M More For Marketing
Hawaii's Tourism While Tourist Are Spending 15% less
This Year
- Is It Me Or.....
I heard the funniest
thing on the news last night.....Hawaii Governor
Linda Lingle wants $10 million more for the
marketing of Hawaii's tourism. What makes this
funny for me is that the request only came after
meeting with hotel executives. Once again, myopic
request for myopic planning. Lingle should
have requested this a year ago!
I'm not going to go on a
tirade about what I feel is a lopsided focus on
growing Hawaii's economy but this kind of reminds me
of McCain wanting to drill for oil off shore to
perpetuate the fossil fuel addiction instead of even
earmarking some of the money requested for teaching
other growing economic sectors how to market
themselves. But what about supporting the marketing
of other initiatives of Hawaii.......like the
total economic sector of Hawaii? Organic?
Cultural? Arts? Music? WE ARE IN THE INTERNET
ERA PEOPLE!
While the Hawaii Tourism
Authority has $45 million to play around with I see
nothing new from the boring collateral development
that I have seen for years. A few weeks back I
asked a few of my friends all over the world what
they know of Hawaii. They generally all say the
same things; "It's cool. Been there once. Pretty
expensive though...going to Cancun this year". Then
I asked so are you coming back and they say "Maybe,
but I can't afford the day to day out there".
The shock form this
economic tailspin that the world is going through is
going to last beyond a forecasted recovery.
Once a society tastes fear from this kind of shift
they will be 5 times more frugal in the future. But
when I hear the complaints from people about their
day to day costs of coming to Hawaii, it's more
than just marketing that needs to be addressed.
This goes for the opportunities for returning
visitors to visit something new which Hawaii lacks.
This reminds me of
something I learned from Roy Disney, Jr. a few years
ago. He said that the only way to keep the happy
families coming back is to build new rides".
Unfortunately Hawaii has no "new rides". Not
withstanding the new performance facility at the
Royal Hawaiian Mall it's the same old stuff. If
Waikiki is to be the focus of tourism dollars we
need more entertainment venues than stores for
tourists to buy things from. Actually, one will
support the other if set up correctly with revolving
door marketing techniques..
So while Lingle requests
more money for marketing to bring tourism back to
it's feet, I think that the Hawaii Tourism Authority
might want to invest about 1/64th of that to educate
ALL the vendors of the state to market themselves
correctly. Then again, when I look how things are
being marketing in general with the HTA I don't know
if they really have a finger on the pulse of new
media marketing. My opinion is if you only work on
a part of a car, even if it's the engine (tourism),
the other parts will eventually fail and that will
bring it (state economy) to a screeching halt.
By the way, yea we're
going to bounce back from this but don't count on it
for at least another year. Trust me, as soon as the
economy starts the slightest turn around more people
are going to be paying off debt and will squirreling
money away for the next rainy day before booking a
flight to Hawaii.
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