Hawaii is a world-class destination with real-world obstacles when it comes to building traction in China’s growing outbound tourism market.

But the good news is that the state possesses the potential to make significant improvements that could pay off quickly given the consumer spending patterns of these visitors.

That was the opinion of Vicky Bindra, president of Asia Pacific and Global Accounts for MasterCard, who was the keynote speaker at the 2014 Top 250 Businesses awards luncheon held on Wednesday at the Waikiki Beach Marriott Resort. The event, which recognizes the state’s leading companies, was sponsored by First Hawaiian Bank, Matson Inc. and Accuity LLP.

Bindra, who is an expert on customer engagement in the Asia Pacific region that encompasses Japan, China, South Korea and Australia, talked about how Hawaii can position itself for future opportunities from these growing markets, but paid special attention to China, which has emerged in recent years as one of the most coveted visitor source markets in the world.

"I don’t think you are doing too badly (attracting visitors from the Asia Pacific), but the point is how do you get to your full potential," Bindra said.

Excluding Hong Kong and Macau, Bindra said MasterCard Worldwide data show that international outbound leisure travel trips by Chinese residents are estimated at 40 million in 2014, and projected to reach 84.8 million in 2020, growing at an average of 13.3 percent per year.

Despite China’s phenomenal growth as a leisure travel source market, the Hawaii Tourism Authority expects the state to attract only 152,650 Chinese this year, or about 15 percent less than an earlier target of 180,000. Likewise, next year’s goal is only 170,000.

Chinese tourists have a relatively small footprint in Hawaii in comparison with more mature markets like the mainland and Japan. However, their per person, per day spending — which has fast become the highest of any visitor group — has made them hard to ignore. Based on market analysis, the HTA has set a daily spending goal of $384.50 for Chinese visitors who come to Hawaii in 2014. If realized, that figure would net Hawaii $385.1 million in total Chinese visitor spending this year. Next year, the agency’s goal is a slightly less aggressive $276.80 per day. However, if the HTA increases arrivals by its 11.4 percent goal, total spending would reach $432.9 million, a 12.4 percent gain of what is projected for 2014.

But Bindra said cumbersome visa policies, not enough direct flights and limited visitor marketing in China may have at times made Hawaii a hard sell against other sun-sand-and-surf destinations and limited the market’s growth potential.

"I called up the China tourism board to ask how actively they engage with Hawaii," he said. "The answer was negative. They said they engage actively with Japan, Maldives and Korea but have very little association with Hawaii. Clearly, this is a behavior that we can improve."

Bindra said the China tourism board told him that Hawaii would be more attractive to Chinese tourists if it provided more exclusive benefits and promotions such as stay three days, get one night free. Working with the U.S. government to make traveling more convenient by offering limited visa-free entry for Hawaii also would produce greater results as it did for Jeju Island, South Korea, and Okinawa, Bindra said. If that happened, he said, "the numbers would go up three times over the next few years." 

He said Chinese tourism officials also told him that Hawaii needs to do more segmented marketing such as promoting ecotourism and wedding and honeymoon offerings.

"If Hawaii focused on the honeymoon market, I think it would see two times its level of growth," Bindra said. "Thirty-six percent of China’s arrivals into the Maldives are honeymooners, yet it’s 30 to 40 percent more expensive than Hawaii. In comparison, only 4.8 percent of Chinese visitors are coming to Hawaii for a honeymoon or wedding." 

China’s meetings, incentive, convention and event market also holds greater potential for Hawaii than is being realized, he said.

"There’s not enough focus on conferences. They could do the ones on the West Coast in Hawaii. There are major travel agencies willing to work with Hawaii to make it possible," Bindra said. "If you are a hotel company or travel company, I would think that you would be interested in pushing the tourism board to start working on some of these things."

Bindra invited Hawaii tourism officials to sit down with China’s tourism board to come up with solutions that work for the market.

"We here at MasterCard would be happy to host that and make it happen," he said. "It’s in our interest and it’s a very important connection that we could engender over the next couple of years. If you go out and communicate, in about a year’s time, I think that you’ll start feeling the difference." 

But David Uchiyama, vice president of brand management for HTA, said the agency already has renewed its China focus and is making good strides.

"At the start of the year, we hired a new China contractor, Travel Link Marketing, and increased the market’s budget from $1.1 million to $1.4 million," he said. "Additionally, we are partnering with Brand USA, the nationwide marketing arm for tourism, to bring federal dollars to our local efforts."

While overall arrivals from China are down from what was expected at this time, Uchiyama said the market nonetheless has been "growing very aggressively in terms of percentage increases."

Supported by new air service, arrivals from China climbed 61.8 percent to 19,225 visitors in July 2014 from the year-earlier period. For the first seven months of 2014, arrivals increased 29.4 percent to 99,407 visitors.