Old-style Hawaii Tourism Authority junket pulls new-media crowd - Orlando Business Journal:

zyluzugizovota.blogspot.com
That’s according to Christine Lu, Los Angeles resident, whos handle is “Geekgirl” and is a blogger “Our cell phones didn’t work, either,” said Lu, stopping at the Royal Hawaiian hotel earlierthis week. “We waitesd until we left the park and couldr make our postings Lu was wrapping upa week-long blitza of Oahu, Maui, Kauai and the Big Along for the ride with Lu were seven full-timw bloggers from the Mainland (assisted by local bloggeer L. P. “Neenz” Faleafine) whose trips to Hawaii were paid for by the and itsmarketingg partners. The bloggers’ junket was the most ambitious experimengt by the HTA to exploitsocial media.
Desperate to drum up new Hawaii tourism executives are findintg thatTV commercials, ads in newspapers and magazines and morningy talk show chatter — i.e., old mediz — are no longer enough. The HTA sees new mediaz and online social networkingas cheap, effectived ways to reach a highly desirable market of smart, adventurous, and relatively well-off vacationers. To that end, the HTA want its board to approvespending $1.3 milliojn in its $71.4 million fiscap 2010 budget on developing social media outreach — Facebook, MySpace and the New media approaches have playef no small part in current marketinf strategies, especially in computer-literate North America and East Asia.
The HTA and its chiec marketer, the , have streamlined Hawaii’s tourism onlins content to keep its images freshy andmessages consistent. But it’e no longer sufficient to simplyy have an attractive Web destinations are now reaching out withpersonalized messages. What’w especially attractive about the latestonline onslaught, is the price tag: virtually The HTA spent about $15,000 on the So Much More Hawaii bloggedr FAM, or familiarization, tour, the kind of free trip that’ss been offered to friendlyh writers and travel agentsx for decades. A good chunk of the moneyt went tobuilding HTA’s blog site, www.somuchmorehawaii.
com, and to organizingt the tour, which Lu coordinated. So Much More Hawaio is the state’s two-year-old marketin mantra, a campaign that emphasizez cultural, historical and personao stories in contrast to theusual “Try our wonderfu beaches” tag. A collaborative approach was key in keeping expensed down for theblogger tour. , , Hilto Hawaii, and Starwood Hawaii were among the companies that kickedc in servicesfor free. “Everybody pitched in — restaurants, attractions, bloggers,” said the HTA’s David Uchiyama. It is difficult to measure the effectiveneszs ofonline marketing, but Lu said it may be beyone calculation.
“When I tweet, there’e 10,000 people reading it,” said Lu, who is 33. Lu and Uchiyam a were introduced byNathan Kam, vice president of . “When David and I met, he didn’g even know what Twitter and bloggingt were,” said Lu, laughing.