eTN Received correspondence from Johnson W K Choi ,President & CEO Hong Kong Hawaii Chamber of Commerce, China Hawaii Chamber of Commerce & Asia Pacific California Chamber of Commerce.
eTN is a founder of the International Coalition of Tourism Partners (ICTP) www.ictp.travel . ICTP is a Hawaii based organization with 126 tourism boards as members, including many stakeholders, associations in the international travel and tourism scene.
ICTP is part of the eTN network of 1.3 million travelers, 230,000+ travel industry professionals and 17,000 publications and journalists interested in travel and tourism worldwide, including this Kamaainas blog.
ICTP is part of the eTN network of 1.3 million travelers, 230,000+ travel industry professionals and 17,000 publications and journalists interested in travel and tourism worldwide, including this Kamaainas blog.
Among ICTP members are Visit California, Brand USA, the Chinese National Tourism Organization ,but NOT the Hawaii Tourism Authority or any other tourism organization in Hawaii. Invitations had been ignored, even though ICTP is based here in our State, and membership was offered free of charge.
When Air China started service from Beijing to Honolulu in January, HTA instructed it's PR agency not to invite eTN, not to send a photo or any other information to eTurboNews. Our eTN reporter was told not to ask for "favors" when requesting a photo. eTN turned to Air China directly to get the information. Click here for the eTN article.
When Air China started service from Beijing to Honolulu in January, HTA instructed it's PR agency not to invite eTN, not to send a photo or any other information to eTurboNews. Our eTN reporter was told not to ask for "favors" when requesting a photo. eTN turned to Air China directly to get the information. Click here for the eTN article.
Outreach to Chinese Outbound Tourism has been a successful project for ICTP for some time with results for many tourism boards around the globe.
Here is the letter from Johnson WK Choi voicing his frustration with current policies and missed opportunities.
A 7,000 tour group from China just left Southern CA each spent a minimum of US$10,000 - you do the math. Unofficially $ spent much higher. They love CA so much that they are coming back.
cTrip in China sold out a US$200,000 group luxury tour package in 17 seconds.
If you look at CA from North to South, you will be amazed the number of people knew what it takes to bring it large groups with infrastructure support that Hawaii is seriously lacking.
The head of the tourism of all the cities involved are very good sales person. They travel extensively, our heads of tourism ask someone to do it for us and stay home.
The number of Mayors that are Chinese and know what it takes to bring in large tour group help (such as Mayor of SF and Anaheim).
None of our leaders from Governor to mayor to DBEDT have an idea what it take to bring in tour group from Asia besides the Japanese.
On the infrastructure side we are weak, our convention center too small, lack of hotels to handle large groups, lack of venue and theme parks and the long list goes on.
Many of my friends who visited Hawaii before found Saipan more attractive and we are competing with a long list of destinations.
We have a lot of work to do.
Johnson W K Choi, MBA, RFC
President & CEO 行政總裁
Hong Kong Hawaii Chamber of Commerce, China Hawaii Chamber of Commerce & Asia Pacific California Chamber of Commerce
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