Managing tourism crises: an interview with Lily Shum, former director, the Americas, Hong Kong...

The world of Lily Shum, formerly with Hong Kong Tourism Board, involves finding ways to draw people to Hong Kong. Complications are many, particularly since most obstacles to attracting travelers are beyond her control. Nevertheless, she has overcome many challenges--including Severe Acute Respiratory

Keywords: international travel; Hong Kong; Hong Kong Tourism Board

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War, disease, and economic recessions all complicated Lily Shum's situation when she was director, the Americas, at the Hong Kong Tourism Board, a position she left shortly before the interview that forms the basis of this article. Although she is now a consultant, Shum was, for many years, responsible for drawing travelers to Hong Kong, both when the agency was operated by local hotel companies and, later, when it became a government-supported operation. The difficulties were the same in both arrangements. In short, she was responsible for what she could not control--the number of people arriving in Hong Kong. When difficulties struck, including the outfall of 9/11, SARS, and the December 2004 tsunami, Shum's operation had to determine ways to encourage people to travel to Hong Kong (or to travel at all). Her job often involved developing festivals and promotions to draw attention to Hong Kong, while keeping an eye on the number of incoming airline seats. She felt that her success was usually measured in number of hotel rooms sold, although that measurement actually told only part of the story. Another success measurement was whether the tourism board drew travelers who actually took advantage of Hong Kong's amenities (notably, shopping) when they were in town. Drawing travelers who were not suited to the destination created the unwanted outcome of people who did not enjoy Hong Kong, not because there was nothing to do but because they were not suited to its activities.

Few hotel, restaurant, or airline executives face the problems that confront directors of tourism bureaus. Although tourism directors have the responsibility of increasing the number of visitors year after year, they lack the authority to improve the product (the destination), control pricing (of hotel rooms), or expand the availability of transportation to bring in visitors (air travel). Since the primary source of revenue that supports tourism bureaus' efforts comes from taxes on hotel rooms, general managers of local hotels often dominate their governing boards. Almost universally, these managers have short-term goals--to fill beds during the next three months--rather than long-term objectives that might substantially increase tourist arrivals over a period of years. As a result of the short-term focus, tourism directors often face the prospect of high turnover rates because the board of directors frequently decides that tourism has not grown as fast as expected. In spite of these problems, strong heads of convention and visitors bureaus (a term used mostly in the United States) and destination management organizations (often applied to directors of inter national destinations) love what they do and are willing to put up with the difficulties of the job.

Someone who belongs at the top of the heap in terms of what she has accomplished is Lily Shum, recent director of the Americas for the Hong Kong Tourism Board (HKTB; headquartered in Los Angeles). She joined HKTB (then called the Hong Kong Tourist Association [HKTA]) in 1982 from the Hong Kong office of Leo Burnett Advertising Agency, working first in marketing at the central office, followed by a stint as head of HKTA in Canada, and taking over the top spot in North America in 1999. During that time, the HKTA (supported and controlled by hotels during that period) changed into the HKTB (a government agency that includes a hotelier on the board). Compared with many tourism bureaus, the HKTB is well organized. It is also dedicated to improving Hong Kong's image and is effective in its efforts to increase tourism arrivals. Since coming to the United States after helping in the sensitive task of repositioning Hong Kong following the British handover to China on July 1, 1997, Shum has been continually confronted with events beyond her control and has handled each of them extremely well. These include several years of economic softness in the United States and around the world (beginning mid-1997), the bird flu (December 1997-1998, 2001-2002, 2003), a fear of terrorism by travelers after the 9/11 attacks (2001), Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS; 2002 in southern China, April 2003 in Hong Kong), the Iraq War (March 2003), and the tsunami disaster (December 26, 2004). The tsunami, for instance, left many people thinking that much of southern Asia had been hit, even though Hong Kong was untouched.

The varying fortunes of Hong Kong can be seen in the following table of arrival figures from the United States during the time that Lily Shum directed its North American operations (Exhibit 1). As is evident, she developed innovative marketing programs that revived tourism as quickly as possible. Shum resigned her position with HKTB on May 1, 2005, to start a new travel distribution system with her sister in Toronto, but remains a consultant to HKTB. The interview in this article was conducted while she was still with HKTB, shortly before she opened her own consulting practice.

In the interview transcribed here, she describes the joys and difficulties of her job, relates how she has handled various crises, and provides insight into the multiple strategies she pursued to accomplish her goals. It is useful for hotel managers and restaurateurs to learn about the problems that face tourism directors so that all groups can work together more effectively for common goals.

Plog: In your job, do you have direct responsibility for bringing people to Hong Kong?

Shum: That is my main responsibility.

Plog: So, it is not just to set an image campaign, but it is to count bodies, correct?

Shum: Oh, yes. Our bottom line is to get people there.

Plog: When it was called the Hong Kong Tourist Association, you were not measured at that time on the basis of growth in tourist arrivals?

Shum: There is no change from when it was HKTA and now, when we are known as the Hong Kong Tourism Board. Policy is set in Hong Kong, and we simply follow it. We are measured on how many visitors come from the U.S. and how much they spend. When market share goes down, it means that I have not been doing a good job even if it is sometimes beyond my control. There are many benchmarks. Even inclination to travel to Hong Kong is a measure used to evaluate the kind of job we are doing.

Plog: That makes it tough then.

Shum: Very tough, very tough. Sometimes they [those at headquarters] rely on regular intelligence to do the benchmarking, and every two years they do research to check on things. That research is like benchmarking. Are we doing well or not?

Plog: What do you think are the qualities that make a good director, someone in your position?

Shum: First, I think it is important to understand the market, the consumer, and what the consumer wants. After all, consumers are the kings. You need to know the infrastructure of the tourism industry in depth, in terms of product development, package development, and sales and distribution. You need to know how airlines operate and their capacity allocations and where to look for opportunity to get more lift to Hong Kong. Product knowledge is key and, of course, a good marketing sense that goes beyond the three critical elements of the consumer, the trade, and the product.

Plog: That's a lot of qualities to manage.

Shum: A lot, yes. Originally, tourism directors were concerned only with distribution. If you worked with--closely with--travel agents, then it was assumed you were doing your job. But nowadays, more decisions are made directly by the consumer and that makes marketing a lot tougher. When most of the activities focused on travel agents and wholesalers, it was fairly simple. You just walked into a wholesaler's office or travel agent's office and, if they had a problem, you solved it and went home. With the consumer making more of the decisions directly, you have to know how to target consumers and how to segment them into target groups. The distribution channel has changed from just travel agents to travel agents, wholesalers selling direct, hotels selling direct, and online sellers like Travelocity. The question is, how can you best sell your product with so many channels? It's challenging today. It's not as if you can ignore the travel trade and go direct to the consumer, because you cannot. You must handle the multiple channels.

Plog: What else is necessary to make certain that you do your job well?

Shum: Hire good people who know the market, have been in the field for a while, and know how to take advantage of opportunities. You need them to be aggressive enough to cultivate a market. You can't do all of it by yourself. In marketing, another frustration is all of the uncontrollables, factors like SARS and bird flu, and war, and terrorism alerts. We have to be alert to the market environment. Anything that happens to the consumer affects us, whether he gets poorer or richer, and whether he's happy or not happy. It all affects travel and tourism.

Plog: Considering the pressures you face, what are the rewards of your job that make it worthwhile?

Shum: For me, my heart belongs to Hong Kong, so anything I can do for Hong Kong is a reward. That gives me satisfaction--whether it's a challenging time or a rewarding time. I want to contribute to a city that I love and where I grew up. Selling travel is also fun. You make people happy. That makes the work rewarding.

Beyond that, in 2003 when we faced the SARS problem, we made a lot of friends. We got a lot of support from wholesalers, and through the process of driving and leading the campaign, I also was able to command a lot of respect and establish a leadership position. That is rewarding. Before we got into 2004, a lot of people came back to us and said, "What should we do now? You should take the leadership position again and tell us how can we support you." That is an intangible kind of reward. It's not just the money. It's not just a number. It's a true partnership. I help you now and you help me when I need it.

Now they come to us with their problems, saying, "I have a problem. This program is kind of soft. What can you do to help me?" That is the kind of partnership you want because you don't have any reporting structure to them. It is just mutual respect and mutual collaboration.

Plog: What are the things that aren't so much fun in your job?

Shum: Working with a product that you don't really control. In the marketing mix, there are certain elements you cannot influence, for example, pricing and availability of inventory. That can be frustrating. We work with partners to plan a new festival for the market, but we don't control anything. So, if a hotel doesn't give you inventory or the right price, or an airline won't block seats, or a tour operator won't put together a package, that is frustrating. There's also a government-related frustration in the form of bureaucracy, paperwork, procedures, processes, and steps you have to go through to get anything done, which makes your job difficult. When you work in the field, there are opportunities that you have to grab immediately. But by the time you ask for three rounds of approval, the opportunity is gone. It's the age-old contrast of centralization and decentralization. I've worked in the head office of Hong Kong Tourism Board, so I can see the problem from both sides. If it's too centralized, you don't have a free hand to do a good job. If it's not centralized, though, you have things going wildly out of control--missing budgets, overspending. A colleague of mine described it well. She said the relationship between the head office and a field office is like flying a kite. If you pull the string too tightly, it cannot fly. But if you let it too loose, the kite will disappear. Establishing the right boundaries is not easy.

Plog: You have come up with ideas for special events and festivals, like a new way to market the Hong Kong Chinese New Year Celebration. There are other special events that you dream up. What leads you to those?

Shum: There are government promotions that are directed to us. Others are a matter of priorities. You have to get people to come to Hong Kong during soft seasons so you look around for what you can emphasize. Media are important because what they write about is credible with the public. So we look for ideas to feed them. Every year, no matter how busy we are, we go around the country and thank the media. We tell them what is new and get them excited again about Hong Kong so that they continue to write about Hong Kong.

Here's an example. ASTA [American Society of Travel Agents] wanted as many people to come to Hong Kong as possible during the 2004 ASTA Congress in Hong Kong, so we conducted a road show for travel agents in key markets. Another is the incentive market. We send top buyers of incentive trips to Hong Kong to see it. We also display at the ITME [Incentive Travel and Merchandising Exhibition], the incentive show in Chicago. We also created a pavilion at the SeaTrade [cruise line] conference. We have to get a crew together and ship all materials back to these conferences. Then we have people on site the entire time to design the exhibition booths, coordinate partner participation, generate sales leads, and provide services to buyers. Once you determine a new marketing strategy, everything follows from that and you don't have to do much thinking. Each of these groups we meet with is a high-yield group and good for us.

Plog: A lot of people who run destinations complain about cruise lines because they argue that cruisers don't use rooms at a destination. The ship is their hotel and only retailers at the port cities benefit as people come ashore to shop and sightsee. Why do you go after cruise lines?

Shum: That's true if you're talking about regional cruise lines, like those in the Caribbean. But if you're talking about a destination that is half a world away, this is different because people don't cruise to Hong Kong. They start or end a cruise there, and they stay in hotels both pre- and postcruise. Even if you go to China, you will get your cruise in Hong Kong, so the hoteliers benefit. The Caribbean is a different pattern, with its ports of call.

Plog: How important are restaurants in this mix that you're talking about?

Shum: We don't focus on restaurants in our marketing, because Hong Kong is an entrepreneurial city that has a lot of restaurants there. Since the restaurants are so good and their reputation is so good, there's not much that you need to promote. It's like New York. Everyone knows it has great restaurants, and you don't have to promote that. What we promote is centered on Hong Kong's culture-the arts and the culture of Hong Kong. We emphasize the heritage of Hong Kong--its lifestyle, its way of life, its festivals, the Chinese traditions like Feng Shui and Tai Chi. We emphasize learning about a different culture, one you may not have experienced before.

Plog: How about shopping? Do you promote that?

Shum: Our Shopping Festival is one of two anchor festivals that HKTB organizes each year. It's the activity that people participate in most frequently at destinations, although it's usually not the primary reason that people travel internationally.

Plog: Given the importance of the Internet for consumers planning trips, how are you using your Web site?

Shum: The Web site has three purposes. One is to provide information for people who have decided to go. The second is to highlight events that are going to take place. The third is to highlight the types of packages that are available, whether it is an art theme for the trip, or culture, a festival theme, and so on. We put these on the Web site to promote them.

Plog: Is a certain percentage of your budget set aside to support wholesalers?

Shum: That amount is small. We don't look at it as supporting wholesalers but more as a marketing co-op. If a wholesaler has a new product, then we will look at it and say, what are we going to do to help them on a cooperative basis, rather than giving them some money and telling them to spend it however they want on a new package. Whether they are doing it or we came up with the idea, the key is, how can we promote this jointly?

Plog: Whom do you include in the group you call wholesalers?

Shum: It's those who do all-inclusive packages--air, hotels, airport transfers, sightseeing, and whatever you do at a destination. That is our key criterion. We are not interested in just air and hotel. Our interest is in experiences. Hong Kong offers experiences. A skeleton package [air and hotel only] does not provide a chance for a traveler to experience Hong Kong. It's not as good for us.

Plog: Do hoteliers ever come to you with ideas for packaging things?

Shum: Seldom. They sell through so many channels that it's difficult for them to come to us with an idea. Take last year, for example. They worked out a scheme which we thought was not bad--stay two nights and you get the third free. But when we went to the market, the hotels had released rooms through other channels that were much cheaper than the average of the three-night offer.

Plog: So, hoteliers are not giving you the same deals they are giving others?

Shum: That's right. A lot of times, they are reluctant because they sell through many channels, such as Travelocity and Leading Hotels, and they give corporate rates through American Express or to corporate clients. If they give us a better rate, then their corporate-account customers will complain.

Plog: In a package, though, the hotel price is masked. The traveler can't tell what the hotel costs.

Shum: There is no reason for us to be involved in a package, because the wholesaler works that out. We would get in trouble 99 percent of the time because if we worked with, say, the Peninsula Hotel, and not the InterContinental, the InterContinental would be mad. So, we let wholesalers handle that.

Plog: Do you have direct booking on your Web site where you can click on a link and make a booking?

Shum: No, you have to call an 800 number. Wholesalers keep saying they are ready, they are ready [for Web site booking], but they're not. I have two that say they are ready, but I have not seen it working yet.

Plog: Do you see a particular group as your primary clients? I'm thinking of, say, hoteliers more so than retailers or restaurateurs since the greatest share of revenue comes from the hotel bed tax.

Shum: It depends upon what package you look at. The airline portion is about 70 percent of the package cost. So if they drop the price, we have more visitors and your hotels will fill up. If airlines up their price, because they are getting more business travelers, then that hurts. Airlines are also important in terms of capacity they allocate. We have full capacity now and lots of other times. We don't have any spare capacity. So that limits our growth. If flights are full, we will work on windows of opportunity with our partners, such as when they hit a low in demand for airline seats--a trough. The other thing we look for is trying to tie into one-stop connections, such as go to Taipei and take a side trip to Hong Kong. The same thing is true for those going to Japan. You look for carriers that have extra capacity but have to do it with two destinations--a stop in between.

Plog: Do you work with Japan National Tourist Office too as a complementary partner?

Shum: We do, but its finances are tight, and when it does have money, it markets only in Japan because the Japanese market is big enough as a country, which I understand. Working with Thailand is better, and China is now our biggest partner. Flights between Japan and Hong Kong are always full. There is no capacity available. Now, there is capacity from the U.S. to Japan, but the segment from Japan to Hong Kong is usually full when business travel is good. So, you can fly to Japan and you cannot fly from Japan to Hong Kong.

Plog: In the past, when you were the Hong Kong Tourist Association, your money came directly from the organizations that were bureau members. I assume that hoteliers were your most important clients then because they contributed the most dollars through bed taxes. Now it's indirect. As a result, whom are you trying to serve most? Or is your task only to try and get people there?

Shum: In the past, we didn't report to hotels directly, but they felt psychologically that we were their staff because the money was coming from them. Now it's indirect and there is no such obligation. So, when we talk about an NTO [national tourism organization], everybody is your boss. The government of Hong Kong is our primary stakeholder because they give us the money. The public is also our stakeholder because they pay taxes. Hotels, airlines, consumers--everyone is our boss. That said, the most important audience is the wholesaler. If you have nobody coming, you have no business. They bring people--large numbers of them.

Plog: Your task, then, is just to get people there. You don't care what they do when they are there.

Shum: Not exactly. If we don't get the right kind of people, they don't spend money. Worse, when those types return home, they'll say that there's nothing [to do] in Hong Kong. So we have to ensure that Hong Kong works with our clients, the wholesalers, in terms of providing a good destination experience. Make sure they have the best tour. Make sure they do some shopping. Then they will come back happy and will influence their neighbors, friends, and relatives. That's why we work so hard with our wholesalers to get the right experience. But some of our wholesalers say, "Forget it!" They just want to sell a skeleton, which is minimum hotel and minimum air. This kind of traveler will return home not happy and complain about Hong Kong. The next trip, they'll go to Macau. Instead, I want a trip to Hong Kong to be a total experience that includes festivals and dining and shopping and other things where people truly experience Hong Kong. I want this kind of an involving trip, or I will say to the wholesaler that I'm not going to work with you.

Plog: Your primary client, then, is consumers-leisure travelers. You are less worried about business travelers?

Shum: We primarily aim at leisure travelers, but we are interested in business travelers coming on incentive trips, as part of meetings and as part of association events. We work long term to get about 30,000 business travelers a year who fit into these categories. These people could meet anyplace--in Japan or Shanghai. Big companies like IBM have offices all over the world, and they could meet almost anywhere. So our task is to get them to take incentive trips or hold corporate meetings in Hong Kong, rather than some other place, and also to attract association meetings.

Plog: In terms of leisure travelers, are you more focused on FITs [individual travel] or groups?

Shum: The trend now is FITs. We just follow the trends. We still work with groups, but groups are declining somewhat right now.

Plog: How are you able to handle your job? I see you organizing and directing so many events. Even today, you have a big event for this evening--the Chinese New Year celebration where you are inviting wholesalers and the press who have worked with you.

Shum: I think it is two things. One is thorough planning. It is most important. There is no way you can travel around the country and meet with every wholesaler and plan every event. You have to prioritize. In a nutshell, the job is proper research and planning because you have to determine what are the priorities for that year. Proper analysis will tell you what you can do and cannot do. What are the opportunities, and can you do anything with the opportunities? Also, what are the threats to travel that you know about? Are you ignoring the threats, and what can you do about them? Once you set up those priorities, the rest will fall into in place.

Plog: Give me some examples of that.

Shum: One big threat is people flying nonstop to China and bypassing Hong Kong. That is what United, Air China, and others are doing. There is nothing I can do about that. So I have to work with other airlines that have a stop in Hong Kong. We look for those airlines, like Cathay Pacific, which just flies to Beijing. But they also have to go to Hong Kong because they are the home carrier for Hong Kong. We get them to have a Hong Kong-Beijing extension. Another opportunity is ASTA, which selected Hong Kong for 2004. We had two thousand agents in Hong Kong and helped them learn the product-and they paid for their own visit, so that is an opportunity.

Plog: How did you manage to get the ASTA conference for Hong Kong?

Shum: We bid on that seven or eight years ago. I was involved in the bidding. ASTA has a bidding manual, and it defines what they want. We looked at what we could do, the funds we could pull together to support it, and how we could organize the conference. Especially important is how could we get the most out of it? What incentives can we offer agents to sell Hong Kong? Some agents we might even invite and give them a free trip to see Hong Kong. That's one incentive example. A couple of years ago, when Jackie Chan came out with the movie Rush Hour, we helped launch and promote the movie and Jackie Chan. I suspect that's one reason that we have more males than females as visitors in the last year or two.

Plog: Let's look at some of the happenings and events that you can't control but which can affect all of your efforts. What did you do to counter the travel disruptions created by the Iraq War?

Shum: September 11 didn't affect us as much as other destinations, except that we had to cut the price to get people to travel. As far as the Iraq War, if there is no SARS, Asia can benefit from a global event that is so far away. People still want to travel. They consider it a personal right. So if they're not traveling to the Middle East or they're not traveling to Europe, then Asia theoretically should benefit. All of Asia has so much potential, like China and other countries. So, if there is no war and no SARS, then Asia should do well. In the aftermath of 9/11, people wanted to get closer to family so they tended to take driving trips and just visit loved ones and friends, rather than take an international trip. They also drove to theme parks or purchased an AAA package in the U.S. because they ruled out other places. National parks in the U.S., Alaska, and Canada were popular then, along with Mexico.

Plog: Tell me about other big crises you have had to handle and how you have approached them, such as 9/11, SARS, terrorism, and other things.

Shum: I would like to cite two events. One is 1997, the handover of Hong Kong from the British to China, and the other is SARS. The 1997 handover is complicated because, apart from the political side of it, the world faced a financial crisis. The handover happened on July 1, 1997, and the financial crisis in Asia started on July 2. People did not recognize the domino effect of the two together until later. So everybody complained about problems of the handover, but people also didn't have money to travel because of the financial crisis. That is challenging--handling the two together. In general, people thought that Hong Kong was no longer a good destination when it was handed back to China. Under the British, it was a jewel--at least, that was the perception. Under China, they thought it would be nothing. It was just one of many cities in China, and therefore, it was no longer that attractive.

Plog: You're saying that this is still a holdover image today?

Shum: Yes. It's something that takes time to heal. On the one hand, we had to do a lot of marketing and PR, especially PR. After the handover, we invited 6,000 journalists from all over the world to see Hong Kong. They returned and wrote stories about how Hong Kong is still a wondrous place to visit. We developed the new positioning campaign of "Hong Kong: The City of Life." The previous campaign, "Wonders Never Cease," was not credible because consumers felt that the wonders were now gone. Therefore, it seemed like overboasting. We also had to let time heal and correct the misconceptions. Seeing is believing for travelers. In some respects, we had to wait for new customers to come in, both leisure and business, and see it for themselves and return home with good word-of-mouth advertising. So we went through a valley in 1998 and 1999, and then 2000 was a banner year.

The other challenge was SARS in 2004. I thought that September 11 was bad, but it just took some time after it happened until things picked up again. Research helped me after 9/ 11 by telling me how long people would continue to be afraid and, finally, when they were willing to travel again. Then we could mount a campaign to get them to come again. But then SARS happened, and it was much worse. With September 11, the market dropped about 26 percent. But with SARS, at the worst month, the market dropped 90 percent. So, almost no one was traveling. That was extremely challenging. Tourism revenue was lost that could never be made up, and some hotels were close to bankruptcy. Again, we did research to find out when the consumer would be willing to return. We always believe in getting the pulse of the consumer, when they feel psychologically it is O.K. to travel. Working in partnership with research, we were able to have a plan ready to put into place when we believed that consumers would travel, if they were given specially priced packages. There are two important advisory councils on world health--the World Health Organization and the CDC [U.S. Centers for Disease Control]. We had to wait until both said it's clear. It's O.K. to travel. No more ban or travel advisory against Hong Kong. We also checked with top corporations like IBM and Citibank because they can have their own advisories that tell their people not to travel. In that situation, if you do travel, it is not the company's responsibility. To change things, we had to send out messages to the media, to consumers, and to businesses to let them know that everything was again O.K.

Plog: What was your plan to get out of the SARS problem? How did you handle it?

Shum: The first part is PR. We sent media that have powerful reach, like TV and newspapers, but not magazines, to go and see it for themselves and report on it when they came back. Then we tested different markets.

Plog: What do you mean tested? Did you do research on different markets, such as the ethnic market?

Shum: No, the ethnic market will always travel. Chinese have to go for business reasons or whatever, and also, many have family ties there. You don't have to advertise to them. If I have a daughter living in Hong Kong, I want to go there whenever I can. The ethnic market is totally aware of what's happening. They read the papers every day and talk with each other. Just drop the air fares and hotel rates and they will go. It's inexpensive to encourage them to come. No, the test is to offer Hong Kong for $499 roundtrip, or Hong Kong one way for $299. You test these fares and see if people will buy the tickets. Airlines are more concerned about regular business travelers, so we call business partners that we work closely with, like American Express. We had a promotion going before this happened with American Express, and we called Amex and asked them, "What's the policy at IBM and at other companies?" Most of the time, you don't even have to call businesses, because they all have Web sites that post travel policies. You can read the alerts and know what's going on. When the ethnic market is traveling and enough businesses are traveling, then you can concentrate on the discretionary market--mainstream consumers. We did research on which target segments among consumers would be more likely to travel first and what kinds of offers would get them to travel. Timing is critical--knowing when they would travel and what kinds of special offers are necessary to get them to come. The ethnic market [Chinese living in the United States] is the first to return, followed by FITs. Group travel [tours] is the last market to return. Group travelers are cautious and conservative.

Plog: That's why they travel in groups.

Shum: Yes. January through March is the time that people book group travel. If a big disaster happens in that period, then you have to work on filling in the holes in some way. The future is always full of surprises and challenges, but that's what keeps this job from getting boring and makes it exciting to come to work every day. I don't think I would know how to handle a typical work environment where I punched the clock in at 8:30 in the morning and went home at 5:30 without feeling a sense of responsibility for handling some new challenge or opportunity.

Stanley C. Plog, Ph.D., is the founder of Plog Research, inc., and now operates as an independent consultant (scplog@earthlink.net). He has been in the field of travel and tourism consulting and research for more than thirty-five years, including working with destinations and hotel chains worldwide. The Hang Kong Tourism Board has been a client since 1997. He is also on the editorial board of the Cornel/Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly.

Exhibit 1:
Hong Kong Tourism Arrivals from the United States

Year     Number of Arrivals

1999           858,925
2000           966,008
2001           935,717
2002         1,000,844
2003           683,791
2004         1,051,696 (a)

(a.) A record.