APEC: How Many People Are Really Here?
Honolulu braced itself for an influx of thousands of visitors as the week-long Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit kicked off.
Hotel rooms began filling up earlier this week. Officials estimated $30 million in expenditures as a much-anticipated 20,000 participants 鈥 diplomats, CEOs, journalists and support staff 鈥 spent big on hotel rooms, eating out and shopping.
So how many people are here as of Friday? Turns out no one really knows. Or if they do they’re not saying. But it’s probably not close to 20,000.
The Hawaii Host Committee said to ask the State Department.
The State Department rep at the Convention Center said he only handles media attendees. He said talk to the APEC Secretariat.
The APEC Secretariat, which organizes the event, did not respond to requests about how many delegates are in town.
Staff at the Convention Center pointed us to a special room where people who handle logistics for the delegates were working. But the room was off limits to media. And no one would come out to talk.
Ultimately, Lois Hermann, a staffer in the press information center, agreed to go into the special room and ask the question.
She says she was told the Secret Service is the one with the number. And they are still counting.
“And it鈥檒l take a while before they鈥檙e counted up,” she said.
Here’s what we do know.
At the Sheraton Hotel, down the street from the Hawaii Convention Center, chief executives from Pacific Rim businesses kicked off their three-day CEO Summit Thursday.
The is just shy of 900 people, including a handful of world leaders and Hawaii officials like the governor. But it’s unknown how many people are actually there because the official list only includes those people who agreed that their names could be released publicly, a CEO Summit media rep said.
David Fishman, another member of the media team, said summit organizers had estimated that 1,500 people would attend, including business executives, their staff and the media covering the event. He called the summit 鈥渙ne of the best attended ever.鈥
And then there are the reporters. More than a thousand journalists have already arrived to film, photograph and write about APEC events, according to Dick Custin, who handles media for the State Department.
About 1,100 have picked up their press passes granting them access to the convention center, Custin said, but that’s still short of the 1,786 who signed up for press credentials.
Custin 鈥 who has worked State Department events since 1998 鈥 said it isn鈥檛 unusual for reporters to reserve spots at big meetings but never arrive.
鈥淚n terms of journalists, I can say maybe about a third of who register actually show up,鈥 he said.
Custin said he鈥檚 expecting another wave of reporters to fly into Honolulu with world leaders such as President Barack Obama, who was expected to arrive Friday night.
鈥淎s the leaders get off the planes, so do some of their press,鈥 he said.
One way to figure out how many people are officially attending the summit would be to count the gift bags that have been given out. APEC volunteers said there were originally 6,000 gift bags for delegates, 2,000 gift bags for media and 1,500 for attendees of the CEO Summit.
How many are left?
No one will say.
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