National Promotion For Maui

A nationwide promotion program to stimulate tourism to Maui and the Kaanapali resort area will get underway in January.

Peter Sanborn, Maui manager for Amfac Communities, Inc., said the year-long event will cost about $340,000. Costs will be divided among participating organizations, which include Amfac, United Airlines, Samsonite Corp., Hawaiian Airlines, the County, and the Kaanapali Beach Operators Assn. (KBOA).

The KBOA, composed of hotel operators and other businesses in the resort area, will pay about three-quarters of the total cost, he said.

The program is built around advertising and articles in several national magazines and promotions by the airlines and Samsonite encouraging their customers to visit Maui.

The goal of the program is to build a unique identity for Maui-seperate from the rest of the islands-in the minds of mainlanders.

According to an announcement from the Honolulu advertising agency of Fawcett-McDermott Associates, Maui Mayor Elmer Carvalho said that "through this program, we plan to retain our leading position in the neighbor island travel picture."

Sanborn pointed out that increasing tourist development on the neighbor islands has created a competition between the islands of Maui, Kauai and Hawaii for tourists. The promotion is designed to keep Maui foremost in the plans of mainlanders coming to Hawaii.

The plan is to include a 20-page advertising section in the Februrary issue of Vogue magazine; the use of Maui sites as backdroups for photographing the new Vogue spring resort fashions; an eight-page section in the national edition of Newsweek, probably in late May or early June; and large ads in National Geographic and Sunset magazines.

United and Hawaiian Airlines will emphasize travel to Maui throughout 1972. Samsonite will feature Maui along with the sale of its luggage in thousands of U.S. retail outlets.

More than seven million readers are expected to be reached through the magazine articles and advertisements and millions more will hear of Maui through the various other media presentations.