This is no real news to the HTA (Hawaii Tourism Authority) but to the new “click and mortar” companies opening in Hawaii, it might be one of the most overlooked targets of their marketing. The HTA’s challenge of trying to recover from a double digit decline in Asian visitors this year it doesn’t mean that Asian consumers are not buy Hawaii based products.
Other obvious economic signs that we should be looking towards the west is the state of the mainlands economy. Thought the mainland and Canada are still a large part of our tourism base, even a 5 % drop can cause loss of businesses and jobs. This Holiday season will be a big sign on how summer of 2012 will perform, or not.
Hawaii holds the most segmented Asian population in the United States which means that the communication possibilities to reach the Asian market is enormous. Yet I still see a major hole in brand penetration to the west in regards to preparing content in different languages.
This is pretty simple. If you speak Japanese, release content in Japanese too. Using the same keyword and content strategies you can break into other language search engine results. Don’t be afraid to take a blog that you already posted and convert it into the other language that you speak and re-post it. But beware, you should REALLY speak the language that you are marketing to. If you use a translation program to get your content out to multiple languages then it can make you look uneducated to the potential customer.
