March’s double-digit decline in meetings, conventions and incentives (MCI) arrivals to Hawaii didn’t come as a complete surprise to officials at the Hawaii Tourism Authority (HTA).
“We actually anticipated it,” David Uchiyama, vice president of brand management for the HTA, said of the 14.4% plunge. “Our meetings, convention and incentive business, especially our citywides, is a little weaker this year and next year. … And we knew our forward booking strength wasn’t as great as we’d like it to be.”
Year to date through March, Hawaii’s MCI arrivals were down 3.2%, and Uchiyama expects total 2012 business in that sector to remain relatively flat year over year.
“For us to be able to retain a pretty even market to last year, that’s really an accomplishment,” Uchiyama explained, noting that MCI demand remains tepid across the U.S. “If you look at the backlog of business on the books last year, it didn’t look like the year was going to hold up at all, so we were looking for it to be much worse than it actually is.”
According to Uchiyama, concerns about holding meetings in what some perceive as solely leisure destinations continue to hamper conventions and incentives bookings not only in Hawaii but also in places like Las Vegas and Florida. And the persistence of those attitudes has prompted the HTA to reassess some of its MCI goals.
“We’re revisiting our entire approach and the meetings segments that we’re going after,” Uchiyama added. “We really need to assess what vertical markets within the meetings or business segment really have the wherewithal to meet in a location like ours. … And more specifically, we’re trying to build the backlog of business on the books.”
Uchiyama said the current strength of Hawaii’s leisure market is providing an opportune window for that assessment and a chance to begin planning for a trio of worrisome years looming later this decade. He said 2016 through 2018 “are years of concern. And in the past, we’ve not had the luxury of looking out that far in advance and saying, ‘Hey, we’ve got to do something about [2016-18], because we lost Aloha Airlines or oil prices shot through the roof and airfares were skyrocketing or Wall Street collapsed or H1N1 or the Japanese tsunami.”
In the meantime, however, Oahu recently enjoyed a substantial boost in MCI business from the 14,500 attendees of the American Association of Orthodontists 112th Annual Session, held at Honolulu’s Hawaii Convention Center from May 4 to 8, and will welcome more than 1,000 people for the American Pain Society’s annual scientific meeting at the venue later this week.