Headlines Get Attention
Unfortunately all that some people read are the headlines, and if you get into the meat of the story the facts are rarely as sensational as the headlines. For example, this headline appeared in Pacific Business News today:
Hawaii Hotel Occupancy Down, Room Rates Up
The article goes on to say that statewide occupancy is down 4.6 percentage points from 2007 to 78.4 percent, and room rates, climbed 1.2 percent to $231 a night.
Digging a little deeper we see that the Oahu occupancy fell a mere 1.9 percentage points to 83.1 percent. The big drops were on Kauai (10.5%) and the Big Island (8.1%), where the visitor numbers are the smallest anyway.
When talking percentages we need to remember that the huge majority of visitors are on Oahu, where occupancy was off a tiny 1.9%, and 81.1% of the rooms are full. In my book that is nothing to get so hysterical about, especially when you take into account that these people are spending more money than the missing 1.9% would have spent if they were here. 
I read that people are concerned about the economy. I think that much of that is a state of mind, and the press could do us all a big favor by spinning the facts in a positive manner. Think about a headline saying:
Oahu Barely Feels the Impact of a Supposed Recession - Lucky We Live Hawaii
Then go on and print the factual details.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 22nd, 2008 at 4:02 pm and is filed under STUFF, Success, What's New?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.