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How to get the media to promote your website
You heard about the dating website that’s been approaching various towns with a cash proposition? These are cities with “sugar” in their name or history (the Web address also includes that word). The deal: The town gets $12 million in exchange for changing its name, and all its town signage, to the site domain name for a 10-year stretch.
Waianae somehow was selected, due to its sugar industrial history. Did the promotion-pushers realize that Waianae’s plantation shut down in 1946? Or that the email they blasted about it had the wrong email contact for Waianae’s state senator, Maile Shimabukuro?
Bet not.
Anyway, there’s not a town anywhere that’s fallen for this schtick. The dating site hasn’t given a nickel to anyone, but it’s gotten loads of free media mentions, which is likely what it was after all along. We won’t be publicizing the site’s name. This is as far as we go.
A weighty problem for small airlines
Don’t look for Samoa Air’s decision to charge passengers based on their weight to be followed by other airlines. Among other things, Samoa Air has some unique reasons based on the size of their passengers and their small propeller planes.
The airline, which launched last June, flies only between Samoa and neighboring America Samoa, both of which have among the most overweight populations on Earth, according to the World Health Organization. Each of Samoa Air’s planes seats only three to 10 passengers, and industry experts acknowledge weight as an aircraft consideration. For short routes, customers flying with Samoa Air will pay about 45 cents per pound for the combined weight of their baggage and themselves.
All of which led one Colorado-based airline consultant to opine: “I don’t expect any U.S. carrier to touch this with a 10-foot pole.”