 Aloha, and welcome to Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We are a show that broadcasts live every Thursday at 2 o'clock from 2 to 2.30. We show that highlights successful stories of businesses and business people in Hawaii and some of the organizations that support them. Today we're going to have a very successful story of a program that is run by Debbie Zimmerman who is over—I'm not going to say this right, but Lily—Elele—Ambassador Program over at the Hawaii Tourism Authority. And she brought with him Dr. Jeff Akaka today, and they're going to share the story of that program and how successful it's been for bringing conventions into Hawaii. But to start off, Debbie, can you give us a little background on yourself? Are you been in Hawaii a long time? Yes, I came to Hawaii in, oh, 1986. So it's, you know, 30 years now—31 years coming now. So you must have been very young at the time. I was very young at the time. I was working for Hilton in Manhattan, and I had asked for a transfer west. Wow. And so I was thinking west was anything west of Central Pennsylvania, and they called me up one day and said, would you consider coming to Hawaii? That's about as far west as you can get. That's about any further west I'd be east. So I took that job, sight unseen, and moved to Hawaii. And what were you doing with them at the time? So when I was at Hilton, I was representing all the Hilton hotels in a national sales capacity. But honestly, it was a telemarketing job. So I'd call people and tell them I'm the national sales coordinator for the Hilton Hotels Corporation. But I was really a 23-year-old looking for business on the phone. They could see that I was successful at telemarketing, and they thought I might work well in Hawaii where we have to do a lot of telephone sales. So they shipped me off to the 50th state. Well, and that's a great way to come. I would imagine they paid for most of them. Yes, they did. They put me up in the Hilton Hawaiian Village for a month, and fed me, and they took care of me. And how long were you at the village? I was at the village for 12 years, always in convention sales. So that you cut your teeth and got your experience in Hawaii at the Hilton Hawaiian Village? Yes, yes. Very good. And then from there? So then after I had my second child, I was thinking that the hotel business, hotels never close. They're open 24-7, very labor and hour intensive. Especially conventions. They tend to go on late at night on weekends and holidays and tough business. So I retired to be a full-time stay-at-home mom, and the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau called me up and said, listen, we know you need flexibility in your schedule, but we'd like to have you help us with Hawaii Convention Center sales. Because we have this new convention center, and you've got a lot of experience. And so I said, well, you have this program, your ambassador program. And it's a program in name, but no one's ever staffed it or worked it. That's something that I would like to engage in if I were to work for you from a home-based capacity. So they said, great, we'll give you a contract and let's start. And it was supposed to be a little flex time, home-based, part-time job. And I did that for four years. And by the end, I was working full-time with two people working for me. But that's a good home-based business to have. It's a great home-based business. Obviously successful. Yes, yes, yes. So, you know, there's a lot of advantages to working in your home. You can work, you know, very flexible hours, and you get a lot of work out of me in the evenings and on the weekends. Well, you have to be disciplined about it, too. Yes, that's true. Yeah, especially when you've got young ones running around. Yeah. So, and then are you still doing that, or are you back now? Okay, so after I retired a second time, because that business was getting so big, and I really did need to spend time with my kids, and so I took a 10-year break in my professional career to raise my children. So you did nothing for 10 years? Well, yeah, I raised my children. I really took a very unusual path. I became a homeschool mom, which would be a whole other show. I never expected to go there. But anyway, after 10 years, you know, they were done with me, and I was in danger of being a helicopter mother, so I needed to go back to work. And thankfully, this position was available for me to apply for, and I applied for this contract to run the program again, and I've been doing it for another three years. All right, so now you're back into the workforce again? I'm back into the world, yes. And so that's a good story all by itself, as you mentioned, because you were out, and then you were able to come right back in and hit the ground running. Yes, exactly. And I think you've come back with a lot of enthusiasm. When you haven't worked for 10 years, it's a privilege to work. It's a privilege, yeah. Well, I think whether you've out for 10 years or not, it's always or should be a privilege to work, period. Yes. I mean, everybody should be fortunate to have a job. So anyway, you're back in the workforce, you're doing well, you're running the ambassador program now. Yes, exactly. And I guess Dr. Akaka has been an active participant in this ambassador program. Dr. Akaka is our, what we call them, an elite LLE. He's the highest level, and he was actually one of my LLE from back in 1999, right? Well, 98 was when I wrote the program. 98? 98 wasn't, yeah. So he's been with the program since its inception. So you've not let him go this whole time. No, no, he's just been a terrific benefit to our state. The contributions that he has made, hundreds of millions of dollars of economic impact to our state because of his volunteer efforts in our program. Well, that's impressive. And you've been doing this for how long, Dr. Akaka? Yeah, since 98. 98. Yeah. I thought it'd be a great idea if we could get the American Psychiatric Association membership. The membership is about 38,000 nationwide. And we take care of people with psychiatric conditions. I thought it'd be good if we could get all of them to come to Hawaii for one of their annual meetings. It would be, yes. Yeah. And you made that happen. Well, me and a whole bunch of other people, you know, nothing ever happens to one person alone. And having Debbie was priceless, you know, whatever. Projects that are that big, that meeting returned 47 million in visitor spending. Wow. We spent about $3,000 to get it here. You know, I'd like to make an investment like that. Yeah. Yeah. That's tremendous. But literally, we would never have had the American Psychiatric Association convention if we didn't have the intervention from a passionate LLA like Dr. Akaka. So just explain, can you walk us through, how did this all happen? I mean, to take a $3,000 investment and to balloon it up to $40 million. I mean, how did you do that? Well, I guess it stems from where I came from. You know, I was born into a family of servant leaders. You know, Senator Akaka is my uncle. The Reverend Abraham Akaka was my father. And my, from when I was that high, it was always about community activism. And what are you going to do to benefit your community? And I thought, what better way than to bring a whole bunch of money into the Hawaii economy? Yeah. And the American Psychiatric Association has an annual meeting which travels around, had been in Hawaii before, but not since 1973. And so I thought, well, it's about time they came back. So in 1998, I approached the meeting planning department about coming, but they had a lot of concerns. And so I thought, well, maybe I could get some of the leadership interested in it. And I found out that the leadership of American Psychiatric, the president, vice president, the two guys running for president, the speaker, vice speaker, were all going to be in Hawaii for a meeting of the American Medical Association in November of 1998. Perfect timing. And I thought, well, if they're going to be here anyway, why don't we show them how good a meeting in Hawaii would be. And I wrote a letter to Sandy Moreno, who was at the time the head of the convention center, who I'd never met. And I asked her, would you sponsor a reception at the Waikiki Aquarium to the visiting psychiatrist with hopes that they might consider bringing the annual meeting to Hawaii? And she did. And she supported us. About $3,000 was what it cost, I think. My cousin, Alan Akaka, who many might have heard the other day at the Capitol, he was too expensive. So I just, I hired one of his three-member band. And my wife sang at the reception. And my daughter, Maylon, sang. And we had a lovely reception. But I also had invited the entire Hawaii legislature to come in. And a reversal of lobbying. We had a Hawaii legislature lobby the leadership of American Psychiatric. We had, at the time, Representative Jerry Chang, chair of House Tourism, five members of the House, two members of the Senate. And they lobbied American Psychiatric to come to Hawaii, while at the same time American Psychiatric lobbied the Hawaii legislature to avoid law that would be bad for psychiatric patients. See, that whole effort should have been very impressive. That should have sent a strong message that we were serious in Hawaii about not making this happen. Oh, yeah. Well, the psychiatrists were especially impressed that not only did a half a dozen members of elected government officials show up at a psychiatric function, but they even allowed themselves to have their pictures taken next to psychiatrists. So that got Hawaii on the radar screen. And it took four more years of educating and lobbying and creating data showing that a meeting in Hawaii was indeed financially feasible. That's where we partnered very closely together. You know, while he's on the floor of the convention, lobbying for Hawaii, he would call me up and say, I need room rate information. What can you send me about these costs? I need floor rental space information. It's a real partnership. You guys are working together there. Oh, yes. The legislature very kindly wrote past a resolution formally inviting American Psychiatric to come, which I was able to present on the floor of the assembly of the American Psychiatric. Look, even the legislature is asking you to come. Yeah, another strong message. So having the involvement of your elected government officials is really important in terms of raising the bar of visibility. And using that same type of effort, we've been able to get numerous additional medical convention meetings in the same way by having a reception. Like a spin-off type of... Yeah, so a meeting of one organization might be in town where the attendees might represent numerous subgroups. But we have access to inviting multiple subgroups to come. And by doing that, we've been able to get the American Medical Association to come back in 2003. Then we passed a resolution that basically required them to come back. And they came back in 2007, 2012, and they're on contract to come back in 2017 and 2022. And that was Dr. Akaka and the HMA delegation stepping in and getting this resolution passed to have the AMA come to Hawaii every five years. Wow. And that's powerful. And you take the success, and then you can use that as an example when you go out and talk to other groups on how you made it work for them. Yes. What was also helpful was that when the legislature found out how fantastic this was for the Hawaii revenue stream and tax base, more and more began attending the reception. So the next time AMA was here in 2003, we had nine members of the House, four members of the Senate, and Lieutenant Governor Iona. And then in 2007, we had Governor Lingle. And then the next one, in 2011, we had Governor Abercrombie. And at that one, Governor Abercrombie presented a proclamation to the AMAs, declaring the Week American Medical Association Week. And we had copies of the proclamation made for the president of AMA, president-elect of AMA, the speaker, the vice-speaker. You know, and you take this example of how it works, and then you use that as a template for others. I mean, people would be lining up, or shouldn't be lining up to try to take advantage of this. This is great. What's also helpful, though, is that the care of our patients, because legislators don't often get a chance to talk to physicians in their offices because physicians are too busy. So this affords the physician community an opportunity from the top physicians of the nation, and in particular psychiatry, because psychiatric patients have historically gotten short shrift, you know, forever. Even though it's a brain disease, not that different from epilepsy or any others. And that's something that we'd like to come back to in just a second. I want to hold that thought, but we're going to have to take a quick break, and then we'll be back in about 60 seconds. This is Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We're going to take a short break, and we're going to come back and talk a little bit more about the convention business here in Hawaii. Aloha. This is Kelea Akina with the Weekly Ehana Kako. Let's work together program on the ThinkTac Hawaii Broadcast Network, on Mondays at 2 o'clock p.m. Movers and shakers and great ideas. Join us. We'll see you then. Aloha. Aloha. I'm Kawe Lucas, host of Hawaii is My Mainland, here on ThinkTac Hawaii every Friday at 3 p.m. We address issues and importance for those of us who live here on the most isolated land mass on the planet. Please come join me Fridays at 3 p.m. Mahalo. Aloha. My name is Richard Emory, host of Condo Insider. More than a third of Hawaii's population live in some form of association. Our show is all about educating board members and owners about the responsibilities and obligations and providing solutions for a great association. You can watch me live on Thursdays, 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. each week. Aloha. Welcome back. This is Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We're here today with representatives from the tourism and convention environment, the industry here in Hawaii. And we're talking a little bit about how to get conventions, particularly we're talking about the healthcare side right now, but there's a lot of other conventions as well. The psychiatry and the association, we're very successful there. We're bringing in those groups. During break, we kind of got into a little bit of discussion about some of the advances that's been made recently with the Affordable Care Act and Obamacare, that hopefully if there are any changes made, it will be to keep some of those psychiatric benefits that's been added to the program that wasn't there before. But I don't want to turn this into a healthcare controversial... Let's just get back to the convention business a little bit. So how do you see this evolving? Do you have a group of ambassadors you work with and we've got all these people out there? Yes, we partner... The medical meeting market is very, very important to us. And so we do partner with many physicians and the Hawaiian Medical Association. And the AMA will actually be coming back again in November. And so that's another great opportunity for us to work to get the other specialty meetings. And I'll be working close to Dr. Akaka and other HMA physicians on a strategy to make sure we capitalize on that. But I also partner very closely with the University of Hawaii. They have very, very strong department at SOAS, the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology. And it's amazing how those people are magnets for conventions because of their global networks. When I first started this program, we tried to get the American Geophysical Union Ocean Sciences meeting and they told us we will never come to Hawaii. And I thought, boy, if we can't get the Ocean Sciences meeting, we should pack it up and go to the beach. That should be a natural for Hawaii. And so I called Dave Carl over at SOAS. And I asked him, are you familiar with this group? And he said, oh yes, I'm familiar with the group. I'm going to the upcoming convention. I'm the keynote speaker. And I guess I'm also a candidate for national president. And I'm a distinguished fellow. And so I said, great. Well, when you go to that convention, could you put in a good word for Hawaii? And so he went to the convention and literally from the convention floor, the meeting planner called us and said, can I like to schedule my site inspection to come to Hawaii? Wow. And it was all because of Dave Carl's influence. So you got right to the head of the line there pretty quick. Exactly, right? And so when we partner with our LALE, they are members of these organizations, Ohana. They're already political insiders. You know, I'm a paid salesperson. But Dr. Akaka, he puts his professional reputation on the line when he recommends that the rest of the APA come and convene in Hawaii. So he's got to really believe in it. And they take his recommendation very seriously. Well, he's one of them. I mean, you're in that industry. You've got the credentials. You've got the credibility. So you're able to really open some doors with that. Well, that's really important for me that of all of the professions that don't take care of themselves because they're so busy taking care of everybody else. You know, you get lack of sleep. You got dealing with this, dealing with that. That they need to come to Hawaii to get restored. I mean, Hawaii is the most restorative location that any physician could want to go to. And that's what I hear repeatedly from the groups that do come here. They don't know how it's going to be, but once they're here, there's a completely different relaxed atmosphere. See, that's an important selling. There should be a wellness component to every one of the presentations that are made about how you can rejuvenate yourself by coming. Yeah, the feedback we got from the Hawaii American Psychiatric Association meeting over and over 98% of the comments I got was, this is the best APA meeting I ever attended. Yes. And it was based on the strength of that that we got a renewed contract for them to come back in 2020. You know, we almost always rebook these conventions once they come the first time. It's just getting them to come the first time, which is our major hurdle. And I should be negligent if I didn't also shout out to the John A. Bird School of Medicine because they are terrific allies for us, too. So we're really dialing into our local medical and scientific communities. Well, and all the certainties just make so much sense. I mean, to be able to come out, not only take care of the continuing education requirements and the networking that you're doing among the professional group, but then also they get to relax a little bit and de-stress, but then also the families have a lot of good, healthy things to do while the others are busy doing their convention stuff. Yeah, I know of no other location where you can take care of your business from 7 to 3. And when the business is done, you go to your hotel and you go to the beach. Nowhere else can you do that. One other important point I want to make is that Hawaii really is becoming the global center of relationships between America and the East, China, Japan, Korea. And it's really important for American medicine to share ideas and perhaps positively influence the kind of medical care that these other developing nations are right on the cusp of developing. And that's another really important reason for why every medical group should come to Hawaii and work with the convention center to attract medical society, sister medical societies from Japan, China to come to Hawaii. And we are so fortunate because we have global marketing partners representing Hawaii in Japan, in China, Korea, Oceania. So these are people on the ground, just like myself. They can help facilitate these relationships. They can help with travel arrangements. And increase attendance at the meetings. And increase attendance at the meetings, yeah. And I was just going to ask that. I mean, do these people that are in these different countries have ambassadors like Dr. Hakaka that can actually go out and engage with? They're developing their networks right now. And that's always our plan is we use our LLE sometimes to help them find ambassadors in those countries. Well, that's got to be a key to the formula in China, Japan or Korea or wherever to get into those associations and convince them to come. And if we can create this meeting place where everybody can come together. I mean, that's like the perfect world. Right. We have a meeting. It's called the American Chemical Society Meeting. It actually started maybe 50 years ago when the Japan Chemical Society was turning 100. And they wanted to do something special to celebrate their centennial. So they wrote the American Chemical Society and they said, you know, we want to do something special for our anniversary year. Why don't we do a joint meeting in Hawaii? And they started at the first year. They had about 3,000 people and it was so successful. And then they said, well, we should do this again. And they said, well, if you're going to do it again, the Koreans said, we'd like to come. And then the Chinese said, we want to come and the Canadians come. And so for every five years, this meeting has been growing and growing and growing. And now it's 15,000 people. Wow. So from 3,000 to 15,000. To 15,000. And it's on rotation and it's right around the third week of December, which is usually a very slow time in Hawaii. Perfect. And I would imagine that would bring in a few million dollars. Oh, yes. Yeah. So we can create more of these East-West type meetings. Absolutely. Well, we're the perfect middle ground for that. Yeah. And to the point of wellness in the environment. I mean, not only with middle ground, but there's so many other good, healthy things to be doing while they're here. Yeah. Excellent. Now we've talked a lot about the medical profession and all the different associations. Do we have any other similar type of efforts into other industries? Yes. So, of course, there's electrical engineering. Okay. And we work very closely with the electrical engineering and the entire engineering school at the University of Hawaii. And so we go after a lot of meetings called IEEE or ACM or American Society of Mechanical Engineers. You know, these are all part of our targets. Astronomy is huge. We've done many astronomy conventions. And we've got some facilities here that we might hopefully show off someday. Yep. Yep. That's right. So, and then Earth Sciences, you know, we book a lot of meetings related to volcanoes, you know, thanks to our expertise in that. And, you know, the University of Hawaii, they help us write the business case. If we're going after the American Society of Microbiology as a lay person, I don't know what's of interest in microbiology in Hawaii. But when I partner with Ed DeLong or Dave Carl at SOEST, they can help me really craft a thoughtful bid that helps us overcome perceptions that perception challenges. There's an industry that I've been giving you some thought to and that we do have sand erosion a little bit, right? Yeah, that's right. So the beaches are kind of disappearing. That's right. I really think we need to have a bunch of CPAs out here to do inventory on the sand. Well... Well, that's a good point now, Reg, because anybody that belongs to a professional organization can be in a lolly. So, you know, if you're a member of the AICPA, we invite you to, you know, contact me and we can work together on strategies to get these big conventions. Sounds like a lot of fun and this is something that we might want to do either pre-tax season or after-tax season. I think it's going to come out here. Maybe even after-tax season because I think they're probably pretty stressed out by the time April to November 16. So they need a break and some wellness, a healthy dose of wellness. Exactly, that would be... Having something in April or May might be good. Well, American Psychiatrics meetings are always in May. Well, that would be great to have the counselors there with the patients at the same time. We're going to have to wrap up here in about a minute. It went very fast. I think there's a great story here. Any final words before we sign off? I mean, is there anybody that you really, other than CPAs, want to reach out to? Yeah, well, you know, I guess the point is this is a community building. I look at the Hawaii Convention Center as Hawaii's formal living room and so we want the community to have some say into the meetings that we host in there, the big city-wide conventions. If they make sense that they're going to advance economic development, for example, we just booked a World Aquaculture Society meeting and they're going to be bringing in a lot of investors who might want to invest in aquaculture in Hawaii. You know, we want to use the center for broad economic development. So this is why we have the Alleli Program, so people in the community can have some input into the city-wide conventions that we solicit. You know, for me, the most important thing is that we expose the entire world to Hawaii as the Aloha state and to teach the world about Aloha, that it's the unconditional regard for your fellow human being that seeks to do good to a person with no conditions attached out of a sense of kinship. You know, and I can't think of a better environment to come and gather and share ideas than a place like that. I mean, it's perfect all the way around. All right, well, thank you very much for being on the show today. Well, thank you, Reg. And this is Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We talked about the visitor industry and the convention business here in Hawaii this week. We air every Thursday at 2 o'clock from 2 to 2.30. Hopefully we'll see you next week. Until then, Aloha.