Tourist boards HOW TO
HOW TO... ... work
with tourist boards
Randy Baldemor is the chief operating officer of the Hawaii Tourism Authority (HTA), which helped attract 8.6 million people to the islands in 2015, spending $15.2 billion. He explains what tourist boards bring to route development and how airports can work with them
Understand your markets
Hawaii is the world’s most isolated landmass and tourism is our largest industry, so it is vital we use air service resources effectively. As our domestic tourism market is largely mature, our focus has been on opening new source markets for tourism in Asia-Pacific and Europe. The Hawaiian islands
are a premier leisure destination and a significant business and conference destination. People will pay more to vacation here than most other destinations and our state serves as an important geographical and cultural link between Asia and the US. We emphasise these points with our airline partners. Our airline routes are performing well and Hawaii has the most diverse air network in our history, while experiencing four straight years of growth in terms of visitor arrivals and expenditures.
Know your needs Air service is critical to Hawaii. People do not arrive here by road or rail, and few come by sea. It’s primarily the airways that connect Hawaii to the world. However, our resident population is about 1.4 million and without tourism demand, we would only be able to support a fraction of the airlift we have today. And without airline capacity, we would not have visitors from around the world. So it is vital that we maintain high-quality air service to all the islands.
Hawaii has had four consecutive years of growth in visitor arrivals
Avoid overlaps In Hawaii, all airports are owned and operated by the Hawaii State Department of Transportation (DOT). To eliminate an overlap of effort, the state has designated HTA as the agency that will be responsible for air service development efforts. We work with the
DOT to ensure that access is available to facilities and slots. They’ve been able to accommodate all requests, although space is getting tighter, especially at Honolulu International Airport.
Share deep data HTA can track visitor data closely. Millions of visitors each year fill out an inflight survey as they come to Hawaii, providing a wealth of air service information. For example, we get excellent visitor residence by postal code data, which airports don’t get and airlines are always interested in. We also can provide
the latest intelligence on lodging inventory and trends, as well as our local culture, activities, festivals and events. Airlines like to know that passengers have lots of accommodation options and good reasons for flying to the destination.
Share benefits Because Hawaii is such a desirable destination for global travellers, we are often approached by airports that want to partner with us. A challenge we have is balancing limited resources with the likelihood of success for the proposed route. While privatised airports provide some incentives to airlines that Hawaii airports are not in a position to offer, the combination of the state’s beauty and culture, our unique marketing role and breadth of relationships with tourism stakeholders are major benefits to partnership formation.
Air service is vital to Hawaii’s tourism industry
routesonline.com ROUTES NEWS 2016 ISSUE 4 45
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