The Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau wants to get New Yorkers to take a bite out of Hawaii.

HVCB is planning to launch a culinary-focused campaign in January geared to getting more New Yorkers and travelers from the surrounding major market area, including Newark, N.J., to travel to Hawaii. The private, nonprofit corporation is concentrating on the New York region because it’s the only U.S. East market on a list of top 10 visitor source markets to Hawaii.

“Nine out of the 10 top markets are from the U.S. West,” said Jay Talwar, HVCB chief marketing officer. “New York has more Hawaii target travelers than any other area.”

Talwar said the campaign will be patterned after the blitz model, a 15-month U.S. West campaign that helped Hawaii rebound from the Great Recession by stimulating travel from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Dallas and Denver. During that $14 million campaign, HVCB saturated these cities with images and news from Hawaii.

“We’ve used blitzes for years starting in 2009. We felt it was time to attack the New York major market area and this has been a great method in our toolbox,” said HVCB President and CEO John Monahan. The HVCB is a marketing contractor for the state’s Hawaii Tourism Authority.

Monahan said U.S. West and U.S. East results are exceeding forecasts. Through the first seven months of this year, Hawaii Tourism Authority data show, arrivals for the core U.S. West market increased 4.2 percent to 2.2 million and spending grew by 5.5 percent to $3.3 billion. Arrivals from the higher-spending U.S. East market rose 2.1 percent to nearly 1.2 million and spending was up 3.4 percent to $2.4 billion.

“We think the field is ripe for continued success,” he said.

So far this year, the U.S. West has been responsible for supplying 41.6 percent of Hawaii’s visitors, while the U.S. East market has brought only 22.3 percent of them. That’s an indicator to Talwar that the U.S. East could use some blitz-stimulated growth.

Talwar said the budget and detailed framework for the upcoming U.S. East blitz are still in the works. However, it’s already been determined that it will focus on the large pool of 18- to 35-year-old “avid explorers” in the New York area.

“Avid explorers don’t see themselves as tourists. They are travelers. They follow their passions,” Talwar said.

The HVCB estimates there are 5.9 million of these travelers in the U.S. and that 90 percent of them have never been to Hawaii. Talwar said their New York-area population will provide Hawaii with a strong foray into a highly coveted market.

“We’ll use a lot of innovative technology to reach them. TV is not on the list of where they go for information,” Talwar said. “It’s clearly a digital- and mobile-based audience who are commuting to the boroughs of New York every single day. No matter what we do, in New York they do it better. Just ask them. They have the best food, the best museums, art and culture, and they know it.”

But what they don’t have is Hawaii’s remoteness, its cool breezes, its rainwater and its rich volcanic soil — all factors that Talwar said add to the richness of Hawaii cuisine.

“We’ve got great stories to share,” Talwar said.

While the millennials are key to the HVCB’s U.S. marketing strategies, the HTA’s newest North American contractor, VoX International Inc., is focused on what it calls the “zoomer” market, or “baby boomers with zip.”

“Zoomers are the largest percentage of our population. Next year, there will be more of them than children, and the amount of money that they are inheriting in the next 1o years is amazing,” said VoX President Susan Webb said.

According to Hawaii Tourism Canada’s research, 60 percent of Canada’s potential visitor market is made up of adults ages 35 to 64. Another 20 percent of the Canadian visitor source market to Hawaii is made up of adults over 65. Younger 18- to 34-year-old travelers are only 20 percent of the total.

Because Canadian travelers to Hawaii skew older, a TV partnership with “Entertainment Tonight Canada” was the highlight of VoX’s plan to turn the Canadian market around. Through the first seven months of the year, arrivals from Canada were down 10 percent to 295,690. During the same period, spending was depressed by 15.1 percent to $602,600.