After more than a year spent watching a decline in travel and visitor spending, state tourism officials are launching an aggressive campaign to increase tourism bookings through the end of the year.
The Hawaii Tourism Authority just released $3.4 million from their Marketing Fund to add a boost to Hawaii’s visitor arrivals.
Month after month the state's tourism arrivals and visitor spending continues to decrease.
“The economy is based on tourism and for us to be able to bring in a lot of business between now and the end of the year is really important,” Hawaii Tourism Authority VP of Tourism Marketing David Uchiyama said.
The most recent report by the Department of Business Economic Development and Tourism shows visitor spending dropped a whopping 133-million dollars
And visitor arrivals were also down more than six percent, prompting tourism officials to launch an aggressive promotional campaign to bring people back to the islands.
“I think the main one that we are focusing on is the Japan market,” Uchiyama said.
The Japan market has dropped more than fifteen percent and tourism officials say its partially because of the H1N1 swine flu outbreak, but HTJ plans to saturate a "50 Reasons to Come to Hawaii Campaign" in Japan with Hawaiian music and showcasing the Hawaiian culture.
“With the interest in Hawaii with the position of the yen against the dollar, no fuel surcharge,” Uchiyama said.
“We see this as a real opportunity to get some short term business,” Unchiyama said.
State tourism officials also plan to launch campaigns in North America and Australia, ones similar to a "Go Hawaii" campaign in San Francisco this past March.
“And it was very positive. If we look overall at arrivals from that market for the following month they were up significantly,” HVCB Senior VP of Marketing Jay Talwar said.
According to statistics from DBEDT, one month after the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau conducted their media blitz in San Francisco travelers from the west coast went up four percent.
