Maui tries to widen its popularity
A Day in the Life: Juvenal & Co.
Wednesday, May 17
9:26 a.m.: A soft breeze is coming off Haleakala as the beauty shop in Maui’s luxury Kea Lani Resort prepares to open its doors. Amy Klann, a manicurist, hovers over the appointment book as stylist Pamela “Jonesy” Jones, fills bottles with rosemary-mint shampoo, hair detoxifier and other gels, mousses, sprays and pomades. Juvenal Hidalgo, the owner and head stylist, will be in later.
The book is a little slow — even though the hotel is 90 percent full — and it looks like walk-ins will have to fill the gaps. But walk-ins today will be hit or miss. Many of the rooms are taken by a large group, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences — the Grammy people — and who knows how many events are planned that will keep them from strolling in for a little pampering.
9:44 a.m.: Jonesy’s first appointment strides in, a third-time Maui visitor from Calgary. Thirty-seven-year-old Joseph Little owns an oil exploration company and has come to spend two weeks relaxing at the Kea Lani with his wife and two children. He indulges in the $50 haircut for a simple reason: “My hair was long, and I didn’t have time to do it before I left.”
Witness a new breed of Canadian visitor. Canadians are perhaps Hawai‘i’s most loyal group, returning year after year to make up 5 percent of all visitors. But they tend to be frugal, often staying in their own part-time homes rather than hotels, or renting rooms where they can cook. But on Maui, and perhaps elsewhere in the Islands, a strengthening Canadian currency has induced many of these folks to trade in their kitchenettes for mini-bars, more and more taking the luxury route just as Joseph has.
To get the most out of what seems their new willingness to spend, the Maui Visitors Bureau will tempt Canadians with an $80,000 marketing campaign in 2001 — eight times more than in the past.
9:59 a.m.: The phone begins to ring ... and ring ... and ring. Amy is the first one there. “We open at 9:30. A full set? We can do that. Can you hold please? Thank you for calling Juvenal’s, can you hold please? 10:15? Name? Room number? OK, bye-bye. Hello, thanks for holding. Can I help you? Haircut? He can take you Friday at 4:45 — can you hold a second please? Thank you for calling Juvenal & Co. can you hold? OK, we’ll see you Friday...”
And on it goes as Amy books three appointments in the space of four minutes.
“This whole year has been the best we’ve seen,” Jonesy says to a visitor.
Juvenal moved his business from Lahaina to the then-brand new Kea Lani Resort during the Gulf War in 1991, spurning the incredulous warnings of friends, who all said he was crazy.
“Not many people wanted to take the risk of the rent and the tourism, but I said I would make it work, even with the locals,” he says.
An artist as well as a hairdresser, Juvenal had a vision for what he could do here and says his business has grown steadily from Day One — except for a setback in 1998, when the hotel opened a spa, forcing him to ditch his own money-making facials, massages and other spa services.
If visitors keep coming the way they have been this year, Juvenal says, revenues at his salon could come in 8 percent higher than last year. Maui has been outrunning its visitor targets all year, and though arrivals are up only 2 percent from 1999, hotel occupancy rates are on track to beat last year — when the island posted the highest occupancy in the state for the second year in a row, beating O‘ahu for a record second time, at 77 percent.
10:04 a.m.: Maine Huang will be a bride in just three days, and today she wants a little pampering. The 29-year-old New York investment banker just moved to Tokyo to be with her fiance, Bill Park, a financier who works with a hedge fund there. The two are putting on a knock-down, drag-out party for 90 of their friends and family, including a luau at the Renaissance Wailea Beach Resort, a snorkeling trip to Molokini, golf the morning of the wedding, the wedding ceremony and celebration dinner, and brunch the day after.
“It’s like a huge weekend of events,” Maine says from the pedicure chair as Amy scrubs her heels with pumice.
Nearly 14,000 visitors got married in Hawai‘i in 1999 — outstripping resident weddings by 60 percent — and half of them picked Maui, making it the state’s undisputed capital of nuptials. The island guards its market fiercely, spending about $200,000 a year on advertising, how-to planning guides, and even free weddings for writers who will plant the word in national media.
The money buys a cut of a destination weddings market that totals $1.4 billion, according to a survey commissioned by Modern Bride magazine, $286 million of which finds its way to Hawai‘i.
10:17 a.m.: Juvenal has slipped in almost unnoticed. As the proprietor, he works in the shop only four days a week, but he is always there in spirit, his rich watercolors of anthuriums and orchids accenting the walls with reds, yellows and violet. Customers have bought five of the paintings, bringing him an extra couple of thousand dollars since he started selling them last year. Two more have also been sold by his wife, Dyan, at her boutique Anthuriums, in Ka‘ahumanu Center in Kahului.
He glances at the salon appointment book and remarks on its slowness. But the hotel’s bookings are strong through the summer – with leisure travelers who have more time – and he expects July to be the busiest month of this busiest year.
“Once the hotel is booked, we get booked,” he says. “It’s a domino effect.”
Longer stays are driving Maui’s gains, say marketing executives, as the Mainland economy barrels inexplicably forward and the island continues to reinvent itself with renovated properties and more things to do. Juvenal says the last couple of months were so busy that he had to turn people away. So starting today, he will stay open an extra hour, three days a week.
10:37 a.m.: Laura Lee Smith of Newport Beach, Calif., sits for her pedicure with Jonesy. It’s her fifth trip to Maui, and the “professional volunteer” came in for a polish change. Laura, 48, is traveling with her husband, an accountant with the Grammy people. She’s disappointed that the Shops at Wailea, a new luxury retail complex, are not yet open.
“Last time it was just foundation,” she says. “We were hoping it’d be there. Next time.”
The $70 million development at the Shops is the largest of well over $200 million in renovation and construction that has been renewing Maui over the last two years. Due to open in November, the center will mix luxury retailers such as Tiffany & Co. with mid-tier stores such as The Gap. The Outrigger Wailea Resort — the area’s oldest hotel — is the second-largest project, with a $25 million facelift designed to attract a more upscale visitor. No new tax breaks or other incentives are driving the trend, Maui executives say, just the belief that spiffier hotels and fancier shopping centers will attract more high-spending visitors like Laura — a benefit to the private ventures, and a goal for the state as a whole.
Juvenal is convinced the shops will boost his business as well. “There’s going to be a lot more local traffic going through there, so I think we’ll get some overflow,” he says.
Dyan is thinking about putting a second Anthuriums outlet in the Shops. “But only if the deal is cherry,” she says.
10:52 a.m.: Juvenal is cutting his first appointment of the day, Lynda Sammons, a developer of small-scale specialty homes from Park City, Utah, and one of Juvenal’s rare non-local clients.
“I needed my bangs trimmed and he does such a great job I don’t need them cut for four or five months,” says Sammons, who has come to Juvenal during her Maui vacation for the last two years. She pays $20.
Like Lynda, about a third of all Maui’s visitors come from the West, and predominantly the West Coast, where Hawai‘i gets about half of all its Mainland tourists. This year, Maui will spend $500,000 on marketing — more than twice as much as past years — to keep them coming. Although Lynda is a visitor, like 90 percent of the salon’s customers, Juvenal has cultivated local clients — especially those who work in the visitor industry. “If there’s a waitress at one of the restaurants the visitor asks, ‘Where can I go for a haircut?’” says Jonesy. “That’s why he really likes to pull in the locals. You’re less likely to ask a concierge such a personal question.”
Of Juvenal’s five appointments today, Lynda is his only tourist.
11:06 a.m.: David Liscio is next in Juvenal’s chair. The real estate broker for Wailea Realty Corp. comes once a month, whether his business is good or bad. But lately it’s been nothing but good, he says, with dot-com tycoons and stock-market millionaires pushing inventory to its lowest point in 12 years on the $3 million-plus homes he sells. Most of these people are former visitors, David says.
“The more people that come through, the better chance you have of producing a sale,” he says.
The dot-commers have so far found Maui on their own, probably through the state’s and the island’s marketing presence on the West Coast. But starting in January, the Maui Visitors Bureau plans to go after them more specifically, targeting dot-com lands like Seattle and Austin, Texas.
11:31 a.m.: Maine leaves with polished toes and fingers, more than $100 worth of services that Amy will make a commission from. But today’s session was just a warm-up. On her wedding day, Maine’s hair and her mother’s and her mother-in-law’s will be done by the bride’s New York stylist, who is being flown in for the occasion. Amy will do makeup for all the women, more than $150 worth of services, plus any tips they might bestow.
“It gives me a big boost,” she says, “because we charge an extra $25 per service in the room, and I make a commission on all of it.”
The money she makes as a part-time manicurist helps Amy through nursing school at Maui Community College, where she hopes to become a registered nurse by next June. With extra cash such as the windfall from Maine, she hopes this summer to buy a plane ticket to Arizona, where her family is cooing over a sister’s new baby.
11:49 a.m.: David leaves and Juvenal has a moment of down time. “It’s not as busy as it could be,” he says with a frown. The 160 Academy folks don’t seem to be coming in, and they’ve got 15 percent of the hotel’s 450 suites.
Groups run hot and cold for Juvenal’s business, he says. But Maui executives love them, and they love Maui. About eight percent of the island’s visitors last year were part of meetings or other groups, which tend to outspend the regular leisure tourist. The world’s leading incentive travel company, St. Louis-based Maritz Group Travel, says Hawai‘i makes up a significant portion of its $2 billion annual business and half of its Hawai‘i bookings go to Maui.
Maui marketers will spend half-a-million dollars this year to advertise in meetings industry publications, pay an outside sales team, and to wine and dine meeting planners on the Mainland, as they did this spring in Seattle, Dallas, Denver and Phoenix.
But it took no extraordinary effort to lure the Academy, a well-heeled group whose top executives take their personal vacations here and have brought their employees to Maui five times in the last 10 years. They’ll be back on Maui again next year, staying at the Kea Lani.
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| Pamela “Jonesy” Jones, a stylist with Juvenal & Co. salon, shampoos one of her regular clients, Lei Kahakauwila of Makena. The beauty shop in the Kea Lani Resort in Wailea, Maui, attracts many visitors, but the salon’s owner, Juvenal Hidalgo, has managed to maintain a mostly local clientele . |
11:59 a.m.: Juvenal has slipped out for some air. Michael Ryals, one of the stylists, begins wrapping Jonsey’s hair for a perm.
“We get our hair done and manicures,” says Jonesy about quiet days.
But she warns not to be fooled by the low-key Wednesday. She’s done so well since February, she says, that she will leave for Los Angeles at the end of the week to visit family for 10 days. Jonesy, who, like the other stylists, works strictly on commission, estimates she is doing 50 percent better than last year. If things keep up, she may lift the “no visitors” prohibition she slaps on friends in slow times.
“Whenever you have family and friends visit, it costs you money,” she says. “I turn into a tourist. I go to luaus, take helicopter rides, go out to eat, all that.”
Her one or two annual Neighbor Island trips will blossom into five or six this year, she says, and if she’s really feeling wealthy, she may even replace her 1989 Ford Mustang.
12:06 p.m.: Juvenal is back and clipping Claudia Schnetz’s long black curls. The managing director of Pacific for Less, an Internet travel company based in Maui, also sells wedding and honeymoon packages to European couples, and says both operations are up more than 30 percent over last year. Plus, she adds, people are spending more.
“They want to have the best hotel and the best package,” she says. “From last year to this year you really see it. I seldom sell three-star hotels. I sell five-star hotels.”
Much of that business is likely to find its way to Juvenal’s shop, where Claudia sends all the brides for their hair and makeup.
This year, Claudia hopes to dump her 1995 Geo Metro for a new Nissan Xterra.
12:43 p.m.: Victoria Vojdani arrives on time for her bi-weekly manicure with Amy, who calls the owner of The Five Palms restaurant her “faithful regular,” one of a handful who keep her going when the visitor count is low. Victoria will also get her color touched up today.
Since Victoria and her husband, Simon, opened their Kihei restaurant in 1996, they’ve seen business — and what people are willing to spend — steadily increase.
“A few years ago, the first thing people would look at was the price on the menu,” she says. “Now the first thing they look at is the wine list.”
As Maui’s hotel occupancy has climbed, Victoria also has seen business from locals increase to about 40 percent in the restaurant, where the average entree costs $24.95.
1:59 p.m.: Juvenal adds up sales so far. Just over $1,000, a little less than a normal day. But after 18 years in business, 50-year-old Juvenal says his life and finances are relatively stable, and he and Dyan may trim small stuff, but rarely cut out big plans, such as their regular trips to Vegas, New York, Asia and his bi-annual visit to Venezuela to see his family.
The biggest adjustment came when tourism’s prosperity dealt him an ironic blow: to keep competitive in a robust atmosphere, the Kea Lani opened a spa in 1998, and Juvenal relinquished his. Spa services were half of his business, he says, and when he lost them, he laid off half his employees. He survives today with only nine employees and has rebuilt his business by motivating his staff to be more productive, and by enticing clients to the store with two-for-one coupons and other discounts.
When things are sluggish, he goes into overdrive, sending $5-off coupons to clients, offering bring-a-friend discounts, and even casing the hotel for staff who look like they need a haircut.
Though business has grown steadily since then, Juvenal says he took a “big time” pay cut, that he has simply learned to live with.
2:52 p.m.: Linda Axe, a banquet cook at the Kea Lani and the mother of a 1 1/2-year-old girl says her cute, cropped haircut is the first thing to go when her work hours dry up and her wallet is empty.
“When I had my daughter, I said I need a new look,” she says. “That was March of ’99, and I didn’t come back until March of 2000. My girlfriend snips it for $10. When it’s pay the rent or get your hair cut, you pay the rent. But I’m making money now, so I’m here.”
But with steady hours so far this year, Linda and her fiance, Kiefer Takasaki, a sous chef at the Renaissance Wailea, are hoping for both a wedding and a house, saying they’re already close to having a down payment.
“As long as the work is steady for both of us, we’ll be fine,” she says. “We do have investments, but that’s for our daughter’s future.”
Linda’s biggest scare came in 1998, when visitors to Maui were flat and she was laid off for five months. But despite her low seniority — she’s third from the bottom of 42 cooks — she says this summer has been so strong she’s not worried.
“If anything, I might work four days a week,” she says. “And I have money in my savings account. So if something happens, we’ll just eat ramen all summer.”
4:02 p.m.: Juvenal is discussing color options with Iris Chapman, a practitioner of jin shin jyutsu, a Japanese form of acupressure. With 75 percent of her clients working in the visitor industry, Iris is a human barometer of tourism’s practical effect on Maui. When her clients lost work in 1998, so did she.
“They wouldn’t come for treatments as often, or at all,” she says. But a stronger 1999 has spilled into a fabulous 2000, and since November she has gained 10 new clients, doubling her business from last year and making this year her best so far.
To celebrate, she and two friends recently spent a shopping weekend on O‘ahu, haunting Neiman Marcus, Banana Republic, Armani and other stores in the Ala Moana Shopping Center for a good seven to 10 hours a day. They returned to their suite at the Hawai‘i Prince Hotel only to sleep and order room service. All told, she suspects she spent $1,000.
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| “Not many people wanted to take the risk of the rent and the tourism, but I said I would make it work, even with the locals.”
– Juvenal Hidalgo, hairdresser at the Kea Lani Resort |
“Actually,” she admits sheepishly, “maybe it’s a little more.”
Juvenal also got some of Iris’ exuberance, as she treated herself to pedicures and more haircuts and styling than usual. And with a spike in the business of her husband, a hotel management headhunter, they put $150,000 worth of renovations into their Kihei house. If things keep up, they’ll finish the interior decorations, Iris says, and maybe indulge in “some luxury purchases.”
5:01 p.m.: Jonesy is off for the day, leaving Michael and Juvenal to handle the day’s last clients. Michael has had only three clients today, but he takes it in stride.
“It’s not a problem,” he says. “I try to live the way I live. I may be short, but I don’t worry about it. You know you’re going to get paid.”
Michael and his wife have a two-year goal: to visit Africa.
“We’ve been putting money away for that — about $100 a month,” he says. “We do that no matter what. We really want it.”
5:51 p.m.: Iris is beautiful, and the last one out. She pays for her services, about $75, and despite his early declaration that the shop will be open an extra hour — until 7 — Juvenal prepares to check out.
“Like I said, it was an experiment,” he says, pulling the blinds.
