HONOLULU, HAWAII. THE HIC COMPLEX
A couple of years into our ownership of NRC we decided to present shows at the Honolulu International Center (HIC) on Oahu, Hawaii.
There were no established presenters in Hawaii so it was untapped territory for NRC.
I played these acts, among others, at the HIC
Getting the new market up and running was my responsibility so I ended up flying to Hawaii on a regular basis. Bill would have enjoyed travelling to the islands as well but he was just too busy managing other tours to share the work at that time.
I remember doing dates with John Mayall in the arena, Janis Joplin in the Waikiki Shell, Al Hirt, The Bahanian Dance Company (the national dance troupe from the Philippines) and singer John Gary in the 2200 seat theatre. Since a large percentage of the population on Oahu are Filipinos we thought the Bahanian Dance Company would be a big hit. Unfortunately we didn’t get that right. We lost a lot of money on that attraction.
Hawaii was love at first sight for me. I have vacationed in the islands every year since then but my first two trips to Honolulu weren’t for pleasure. I was running all over town – meeting with newspaper advertising directors, radio station owners and managers, Tower Records, the HIC people, and so on. My initial responsibility was to negotiate “media presents deals”, sponsorships, and cross-promotions that would enable us to expand the marketing budgets for our attractions in Honolulu. I was able to ink a substantial sponsorship with the dominant radio station and then negotiated an island-wide cross-promotion with Tower Records, the largest record retailer in Hawaii. Their advertising dollars and in-store collateral was added to the concert marketing mix and they handled the ticket sales for us as well, thus creating new traffic for their stores. The owner of Tower Records was John Leonard, who was my age and became a friend. John passed away many years ago.
The main obstacle we faced in Hawaii was the high cost of travel. It was often too expensive to fly artists, their entourage and all of their equipment to and from the islands.
My wife, Mary Foster and I spend most of our winters on Kauai.