I hope your summer (or winter, depending where you are) is going well. We are in the midst of getting ready to welcome back our existing students, ensure orientation plans for our new students to the School and extol the tremendous opportunities that exist in Hawaii for studying travel industry management.

On a personal note I have just celebrated my first anniversary in Hawaii. It has flown by incredibly fast and I wish to take this opportunity to say Mahalo to all of our stakeholders, in particular the faculty and staff of the TIM School, for your support and encouragement. We are all very excited about the prospects for the future. I also want to recognize the tremendous support that we have received from the university administration.

We are continuing to work on the implementation of the strategic plan. In the fall we will be introducing the concept of the Center for Tourism Research which will help to bring together the various researchers on-campus working on tourism, hospitality and travel issues. We also continue to work with colleagues from various departments and units in cooperative research endeavors.

Various faculty and staff are working on community issues and participating in discussion groups on travel and tourism issues. We have developed a proposal for funding a campaign to raise the profile of tourism, and as part of that initiative to promote the high quality opportunities that exist within the industry.

We continue to work on fund development and our new Director of Development, Doug Rigg, is in the process of meeting with key stakeholders.

Ramsay Taum, the coordinator of ECO-TIM outreach program, is meeting with community groups in order to develop an activity plan for our support to the Hawaii community.

It will be evident from the reports below that we have been very active in a number of international initiatives. Some of these have been carried out in concert with DBEDT as we work collaboratively to export Hawaii’s expertise in tourism and travel industry management. There are a number of opportunities that enable students and faculty to become involved in international activities. This is extremely important as we work to position the School and our graduates to work effectively in a global environment.

While I was in Asia recently I participated in a number of meetings and discussions which include:

 Khun Pawinee, Southeast Asia Training and Project Coordinator and I met with UNESCO personnel and are in the final stages of completing a publication on tourism management issues in Luang Prabang that has been developed with the support of a significant number of stakeholders including PATA. It should be launched at the PATA Travel Mart in September.

 We are working with PATA and UNESCO on the development of a major proposal that will concentrate on ensuring that the travel and tourism industry is seen as an important partner in the management of heritage sites.

 We are working with the Thai Hotel Association to deliver an innovative course in marketing. We look forward to working with this very important partner.

 I was able to meet with the Vice President for Human Resources for ACCOR and discussed our capacities to deliver training in Asia.

 I had the opportunity to meet with Peter de Jong, President and CEO of PATA. We had a very good meeting and discussed various ways that the School could work with PATA. At that meeting I expressed the School's gratitude for the support that PATA offers to our EDIT program.

 We also continue to further develop the program for our international seminar on measuring the impacts of tourism on poverty reduction, which will take place in Bangkok in early October.

In this newsletter we include submissions by some of our students on their educational activities this summer as well as a report by Daniel Spears on his activities.

Please stay in touch with us and we look forward to your feedback.

Aloha

Walter