Hawaii works to boost convention business by discouraging protests

Jean Christensen

Thursday, May 10, 2001 | 10:32 a.m.

HONOLULU -- When they opened the $350 million Hawaii Convention Center in 1998, state officials hoped to attract a bigger-spending brand of tourist -- the convention-goer -- to blunt the devastating effects of the Asian financial crisis on the islands' tourism industry.

But the center on the edge of Waikiki sat empty for weeks at a time while the convention market flourished in big convention cities like Las Vegas, Chicago and Orlando. Aside from Hawaii's isolation, officials say, the biggest obstacle to bookings was the state's image of fun in the sun rather than a serious place to do business.

"We are sometimes a victim of our own success in our ability to communicate the story of Hawaii as one of the greatest vacation destinations," said Robert Fishman, executive director of the Hawaii Tourism Authority. "We need to tell the world that Hawaii is far more than a leisure destination."

The state is getting that chance this week, when the Asian Development Bank holds its annual board of governors meeting at the convention center. This time, officials are using Hawaii's isolation to their advantage, promoting Honolulu as an aloha-filled alternative to cities where streets fill with angry protesters at international policy gatherings.

The strategy is in line with Gov. Ben Cayetano's ambitious plan to make Hawaii known as peaceful "Geneva of the Pacific."

"We don't expect some of these crazy people from the mainland to come here -- the Ruckus groups and all of that -- just to start trouble," said Cayetano, a Democrat. "If they do, we'll be ready for them."

More than 3,000 participants are expected at the gathering, which begins Wednesday. Anywhere from a few hundred to 5,000 demonstrators also are scheduled to march near the convention center that day to protest bank policies they say widen the gap between rich and poor and uproot communities.

The Philippines-based international lending agency provided $5.8 billion in loans last year for development projects and programs throughout Asia and the Pacific. Its annual meeting last May in Chiang Mai, Thailand, drew more than 2,000 demonstrators who demanded the bank stop funding a huge wastewater treatment plant near Bangkok and stop loans that increase indebtedness of poor nations or hurt farmers and the poor.

With fresh memories of the anti-globalization protests that led to the collapse of the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in 1999, the United States changed the venue of this year's Asian Development Bank meeting from Seattle to Honolulu.

Honolulu was a finalist to host the 1999 WTO meeting, and many say protests in out-of-the-way Hawaii probably would have been smaller and more mellow than those in Seattle, where there were violent street clashes between demonstrators and police.

"This community and this culture is a little different," said Randy Tanaka, director of sales and marketing for the Hawaii Convention Center. "You have a greater appreciation that we're all in one community, and that's what we hope to demonstrate to the rest of the world."

Cinnamon Dornsife, U.S. ambassador to the bank, said Hawaii is doing just that.

"I think that the culture here and the warm welcome really creates the right kind of atmosphere," she said after a traditional Hawaiian chant and blowing of a conch shell opened the convention hall Monday. "That sets Hawaii apart from many other states."

Critics said the meeting could do more harm than good to Hawaii's $12 billion tourism industry. Pedestrian barricades, police and security guards dressed in Polynesian print vests have presented an intimidating scene around the convention center this week, said Walden Bello, a Philippine-based economist and critic of the Asian bank.

Spending on riot gear, overtime and other security-related expenses are estimated in the millions of dollars.

The security presence amounts to the "most militarization of the civilian population since World War II" in Hawaii, Bello said.

"Unfortunately, the government of the state of Hawaii is displaying its fangs at people who simply want to bring their story out," he said. "That is not the traditional aloha."