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After a two-year trough, visitor arrivals and spending are steadily edging up, including by in September, thanks to marketing blitzes on the West Coast and Japan. But a long-time critic of the Hawaii Tourism Authority continues to argue that the state agency is ignoring other markets.

Juergen Thomas Steinmetz, president of the Haleiwa-based , aka the HiTA, sent out his latest complaint against the Hawaii Tourism Agency (HTA) in an e-mail to local media outlets Wednesday.

Here is the complaint, edited for clarity:

Aloha,

I am currently attending the World Travel Market in London. Almost every destination in the world is here. I have attended every WTM every year for more than 20 years. This was the busiest and best WTM I have ever attended.

I am ashamed to be from Hawaii visiting “our (promotional) stand.” … No money for even one poster? A rep who is too busy drinking coffee and talking to friends on the phone. Just six hotel brochures and absolutely no material. Hawaii was the joke of the industry.

My company, eTurboNews, offered Hawaii a (promotional) stand four times the size of the HTA’s. We had a team of 11 in London, and could have taken turns to represent our State in a proper way. The (promotional) stand HTA provided is doing more harm than good. Take a look at the attached photo.

Mahalo

Sorry — Civil Beat won’t reproduce the photo. The quality was poor. But we could make out a single promotional stand for the Aloha State. (We think.)

Previously, when the HiTA has criticized the HTA over its marketing decisions, the HTA has said that the state only has so much money to market the state (its total budget is around $70 million, of which about $60 million goes to marketing — and only a smidgen for Europe), and that the best place to throw money is where the low-hanging fruit is — namely, California and Japan.

The HTA will also tell you that England and Germany and India and the Middle East are just too far away from Hawaii to attract mass interest. Translation: Thank you, Thomas, but we know what we are doing.

But Steinmetz remains undeterred. In fact, he sent out another e-mail blast four hours after the first one. Excerpts:

I guarantee — don’t expect business from wasting our taxpayers’ promotional money that paid for the Hawaii Tourism Authority’s stand. Along with 11 of my staff from Hawaii, Germany, Jordan, Thailand and the UK, we are attending the second-largest travel market in the world. … For most exhibitors this was by far the best show ever — except for Hawaii!

Lots of business, lots of press and destinations from Alabama to Fiji to Zambia exhibited. Most stands had more business they could handle. Almost everyone and worked overtime to accommodate appointments — except Hawaii.

I had the pleasure to independently introduce our Aloha State at various high-level functions and meetings.
I hope no one I talked to will see the HTA stand at WTM — it’s pathetic.

Steinmetz then listed some glaring statistics he believes underscore his argument that Hawaii is losing out to the competition.

For example, compared with Hawaii’s meager presence at the World Travel Market — i.e. one person — the Seychelles stand featured “54 hotel managers, inbound agents, attraction reps and government officials.”

Hmmm. Does Steinmetz have a point?