HVB budget targets new markets

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A new budget heavily weighted toward marketing will enable the Hawaii Visitors Bureau to seek out new geographical sources of tourists and to develop markets among new segments of the population in traditional market areas, Roger Ulveling, director of the state Department of Business and Economic Development said today.

For example, Hawaii will make special efforts to encourage mainland-ers to come to Hawaii for sporting events and will further its already successful efforts in new Asian-Pacific markets, he said in an interview.

The DBED this week signed a contract with the Hawaii Visitors Bureau, which lets the HVB use $12 million of the $15.6 million tourist promotion budget for 1987-88 approved by the Legislature in its 1987 session.

Of the HVB’s amount, $9 million is earmarked for promotions and the HVB says two-thirds of that will go directly into advertising.

Even before the stock market crash last month, mainland visitor figures were down and it was only a healthy increase in visitors from Asia and the Pacific that kept this year’s visitor arrival figures above last year’s record. That tends to support Hawaii’s growing emphasis on marketing in geographical areas outside the United States, Ulveling said. …

He said that means new areas that can produce tourists for Hawaii as well as new markets within the traditional visitor-producing areas.

Finding new markets "is particularly important as we look at the potential impacts of the stock market crash," Ulveling said.

Visitor traffic from the mainland may weaken further, on top of an already soft mainland market through most of this year, he said.

New geographic areas for the marketing will include the Southeast United States.

Affirming the role of the HVB as a contractor to the state, the budget announced Wednesday by Ulveling and Stanley Hong, HVB president, gives the HVB about twice the amount of money it had to work with last fiscal year.

Of the $12 million, about $9 million is earmarked for marketing, $1.3 million for "visitor satisfaction" — to encourage improvements in the way visitors are treated while in Hawaii — and $1.9 million for contingency and special projects.