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The Hawaii Host Committee for next year’s meetings in Honolulu announced Thursday the establishment of APEC 2011 Hawaii, a nonprofit formed to support the APEC Leaders Meeting.

The meeting, to be hosted by President Barack Obama in his home state, will take place Nov. 12 and 13 at the Hawaii Convention Center. Obama selected Honolulu over several mainland cities to host the event, which rotates year to year among APEC’s 21 member economies.

APEC’s mission is to support sustainable economic growth and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region. Besides the United States, members include Australia, Canada, China, Russia, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia and Mexico.

The APEC meeting is expected to attract some 20,000 visitors and generate nearly $30 million in visitor expenditures. More importantly, state leaders hope the event will showcase Hawaii as a place to do business — a Geneva of the Pacific — as well as enjoy the tourism destination.

Next week, APEC 2011 Hawaii will name a CEO. APEC 2009 Singapore Head Secretariat Kay Chuan Tan will be in town to brief the Hawaii Host Committee on lessons learned from Singapore’s hosting experience. The following week a U.S. Department of State team will be in Honolulu for facility visits to the Hawaii Convention Center and the East-West Center, and to discuss division of responsibilities between the state and federal governments.

Civil Beat spoke with Peter Ho, chairman and CEO of Bank of Hawaii, who heads the Hawaii Host Committee for APEC.

Civil Beat: Why did you decide to form APEC 2011 Hawaii?

PETER HO: The function is twofold: The president determined we were going to be the site, and the consensus is that will be good for us in the near term and long term, hopefully. So we’ve got an obligation to put on a good show here. The State Department is in the driver’s seat with respect to content, protocol and major decision-making on how the other 20 member economies will be accommodated, but they need people with a sense of the local landscape to help them 4,500 miles away from D.C. That is the overarching role of the host committee.

From our perspective, locally, the other component is that, look, we are going to have 21 leaders of the 21 largest economies in Asia, have over 1,000 CEOs and senior executives, and 2,000 members of the global media here. So here is an opportunity to focus as a community to be on the world stage for a week. This is a big meeting. It’s not to pivot us away from sun, sand and surf, but we want to pick up business customers.

I thought the Hawaii Tourism Authority was primarily coordinating the APEC meeting.

The HTA and Mike McCartney and others were very much involved when we marshaled resources to get to how we get APEC. Part of the reason for setting up a host committee was because we really wanted a balance of community membership. So that meant pivoting off from a government agency or from a particular industry affiliation.

Bank of Hawaii is by no means the instigator of this. This came out of the senator’s office.

Senator Inouye?

Yes. He asked if I would consider being chair. The executive committee is me, Mike, Tim Johns of Bishop Museum, who is vice chair, and Charles Morrison of the East-West Center.

Why do you need to raise funds for a government event?

We need staff, but the bulk will go toward marketing and promotion and content and events and collateral material that effectively supports Hawaii as a community. We are looking to raise $3 million to $4 million. The HTA is involved to participate in shaping the visitor angle.

I would just stress how big an opportunity for us APEC is. I think when we get a chance to sit down with the community and explain what’s going on, people are going to get pretty excited about it.