“What we really want to do is effect and affect change in the world,” says Aaron Sala, president and CEO of Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau (HVCB).
Given its unique geography as a mid-Pacific meeting place, a gateway to the east-west and a corridor north-south, Sala says this is part of his long-term vision.
“I think as a geography, as a destination, as a way of being, I think what we are trying to do in the work that we do, not just in the meeting space but also in the leisure market, is to re-establish Hawaii not as a destination, but as a way of life, as a way of understanding the world,” he told micenet in an exclusive interview last week in Melbourne, after taking up the role at the helm of the bureau last September.
HVCB visited Sydney, Melbourne and Auckland on an “Aloha Mission” to showcase the meetings and incentive offering across the five islands that form the US state.
“In our work to introduce or reintroduce Hawaii to the world, we’re really looking at the power of human engagement. Hawaii has been this gateway east-west, but also this corridor north-south…incredible diversity in the kinds of people that have found themselves in Hawaii generationally, and the kinds of people that find themselves in Hawaii as visitors on a temporary basis,” Sala says.
During last week’s Melbourne event, Meet Hawaii included an open forum with questions from meeting planners and PCOs that included concerns about the current geopolitical situation. There were reassurances that the bureau and its members would support Australia’s meetings sector.
“Hawaii and Australia have had a very long love relationship and we are partners…we’re really encouraging customers to use third parties, to use their partners, as advocates and knowledge sources, and also to work with us to really create an experience where they feel comfortable and confident in coming to the destination,” said Lynn Whitehead, HVCB’s vice president for global sales and marketing.
Sala said that beyond the entry requirements to Hawaii, “I think everything that happens beyond the port, even the process of the port itself, is guided by people who celebrate colour-consciousness rather than feign colour-blindness. And I think that’s the power of Hawaii in the world”.
“I am native Hawaiian, Samoan, Chinese, Portuguese, so I have a rather unique ancestry,” he said, adding that this year the bureau is 122 years old and in that time it had seen evolution in politics, colonialism, colonisation, statehood and world wars.
“The bureau saw Hawaii through all of these incredible events of history,” he said, explaining that he believed in the power of tourism to elevate cultural practice at the highest level.
Sala says his challenge is to “be the bridge bringing culture and community and culture and industry into common place, common ground. And so I actually take the challenge head on because it’s a challenge that I absolutely appreciate.
“We’ve hosted APEC, we’ve hosted IUCN [the International Union for Conservation of Nature] and we’ve hosted the Festival of Pacific Arts and Culture. Hawaii is primed. We’ve already started to chart that course.”
