Basically, we've become a victim of our own success. |
Because of higher prices, things like one-day tours to the neighbor islands have declined. Hopefully, if we begin seeing more seats and lower fares, some of that activity will come back. |
The sunny Hawaii campaign can be launched anytime but it seems unseemly to talk about sunshine when negative news is out there. |
There's got to be a balance. |
There's probably a number of reasons for it. |
These markets used to be twice the size that they are now. Right now, for some of these markets, it's very difficult, very time consuming and very expensive to come over. |
We are already running at 7.4 million visitors so we aren't looking to increase arrivals. We need to increase spending and one of the best ways to do that is to increase the percentage of active visitors that come to this state. |
We are continually assessing what the impacts are, and the decision to run a campaign or not and/or the scale of that campaign will depend on that assessment. If the story tends to blow over quickly, we may simply have the same marketing message that we already have on the books. If there's an impact on the business, we might assess that situation differently. |
We expect to see a moderate increase in arrivals and healthier increase in visitor spending in 2006. |
While we need to work to maintain the health of that sector of the business, it's not in dire straits. It's definitely challenged by the conditions it's facing, but it's had two years of increase, which speaks to the quality of the experience and demand. |