Old-style Hawaii Tourism Authority junket pulls new-media crowd - Pacific Business News (Honolulu):

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That’s according to Christine Lu, Los Angeles resident, whos e handle is “Geekgirl” and is a bloggerr nonpareil. “Our cell phones didn’t either,” said Lu, stopping at the Royal Hawaiiajn hotel earlierthis week. “We waited until we left the park and coulf make ourpostings again.” Lu was wrapping up a week-long blitx of Oahu, Maui, Kauai and the Big Island. Along for the ride with Lu wereseve full-time bloggers from the Mainland (assisted by local bloggere L. P. “Neenz” Faleafine) whoses trips to Hawaii were paid for by the and itsmarketinvg partners.
The bloggers’ junket was the most ambitious experimentt by the HTA to exploit social Desperate to drum upnew business, Hawaii tourism executivesz are finding that TV commercials, ads in newspapers and magazines and morninhg talk show chatter — i.e., old media — are no longee enough. The HTA sees new medi and online social networkinggas cheap, effective ways to reach a highly desirable market of young, smart, adventurous, and relativelyh well-off vacationers. To that end, the HTA wants its boardx to approvespending $1.3 million in its $71. 4 million fiscal 2010 budget on developing social mediaoutreach — Facebook, MySpace and the like.
New media approaches have played no small part in current marketing strategies, especially in computer-literatse North America and East The HTA and its chief marketer, the , have streamlinedx Hawaii’s tourism online content to keep its images freshg and messages consistent. But it’d no longer sufficient to simplyh have an attractiveWeb site; destinations are now reachinyg out with personalized messages.
What’s especiallu attractive about the latestonline onslaught, is the price tag: virtually The HTA spent about $15,000 on the So Much More Hawaii blogger FAM, or familiarization, tour, the kind of free trip that’s been offered to friendly writers and travel agentw for decades. A good chunk of the money went tobuilding HTA’s blog site, www.somuchmorehawaii.com, and to organizing the which Lu coordinated. So Much More Hawaii is the state’d two-year-old marketing mantra, a campaign that emphasize s cultural, historical and personal stories in contrast to theusuall “Try our wonderful tag.
A collaborative approach was key in keepinyg expenses down for thebloggedr tour. , , Hilton Hawaii, and Starwood Hawaij were among the companies that kicked in servicesfor “Everybody pitched in — restaurants, bloggers,” said the HTA’s David It is difficult to measure the effectiveness of online but Lu said it may be beyond “When I tweet, there’s 10,000 peopl e reading it,” said Lu, who is 33. Lu and Uchiyamq were introduced byNathan Kam, vice president of . “Whenn David and I met, he didn’gt even know what Twitter and blogging said Lu, laughing.