Secret, So Secret
Psst … wanna hear a secret? The Hawaii Tourism Authority must have lots of them! HTA bamboozled the Lingle Administration and the dominant Democrats in the Hawaii State Legislature into passing unprecedented rights to close its meetings for almost any reason at all. All HTA has to do is declare that their board is discussing “secrets” they wish to keep Hawaii’s competitors from discovering. The result is the agenda that has been published for the next HTA board meeting on May 27:
Oh, the secrets we must protect ...
If you have followed my posts about Hawaii tourism marketing (the most recent, Debacle in Paradise, is here), you are likely wondering what secrets the HTA could possibly wish to hide. HTA’s international marketing is amazingly lackluster and the markets they target are, as we say in Hawaii, same-old, same-old. They have been going after the same markets (U.S. East Coast, U.S. West Coast, Canada and Japan) for as long as anyone can remember, and Japan – an important but non-expanding market – still dominates their international spending.
But wait, you say, what about HTA’s increased budget for China? Oh yeah, that’s a big secret. Who would have expected Hawaii to go after the fastest growing travel market in the world? I’m sure that’s one they needed to hide from the competition. And South Korea? It must have been a huge surprise to Hawaii’s competitors that we would take advantage of our own country’s visa waiver program, newly inaugurated in South Korea. Oh, we must hide that.
Perhaps HTA has stealth marketing programs elsewhere. We can hope. Their own published budgets show a vast decrease in European marketing; apparently HTA only wants Brits and Germans, and not many of them. HTA spends a pittance in Australia, New Zealand and Taiwan. Maybe those are the secret programs they don’t want the public to know about. Or could they be running covert tourism campaigns in India, Latin America, the Middle East, S.E. Asia, Mexico, Scandinavia, Africa, France, Switzerland, Russia – all markets in which HTA officially spends nothing, nada, zero, zilch?
Maybe the big secret is a hidden plan to actually participate in the world’s major travel and tourism trade shows! You know, places where they might have to meet and talk to potentially new business partners – not just the same old ones HTA has gone to for years and years. Imagine the board’s trepidation.
But enough cynicism, no matter how well deserved. The real secret, I fear, is HTA’s failure of imagination, aversion to risk, high comfort level in existing relationships and strategic incompetence. Don’t get me wrong, HTA is excellent at implementing programs in the markets they know – but the HTA Board has a responsibility to consider development of new markets and to examine questions raised about the vast portions of the globe where Hawaii is now unseen and unheard. Their secrecy, I’m afraid, guarantees the same-old, same-old.
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Posts may be sparse the next few days. By the time you read this, my wife and I will be on the East Coast to attend a wedding. We’re staying with family and friends, and – as wonderful as that is – it means blogging time may be at a premium and Internet access uncertain. I’ll post when I can, but bear with me for a few days.
