Ernest Nishizaki is the executive vice president and chief operating officer of Kyo-ya Co. LLC, which owns four Waikiki hotels, as well as properties on Maui and in San Francisco and Florida.

Q. What are some of Kyo-ya's properties?

A. Kyo-ya has four hotels here in Waikiki. Starting off with our largest property, which is the Sheraton Waikiki hotel. The next would be the Princess Ka'iulani, and we have the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, which is closed for renovation, and also the Moana Surfrider Westin Resort. So we have about 4,100 rooms in Waikiki. Plus we have the Sheraton Maui Hotel at Ka'anapali Beach, which is a 510-room hotel, and we have the Palace Hotel, which is a legendary hotel in San Francisco, and that's about 550 rooms. We also own a resort in Florida, the Grand Cypress Orlando Resort, which has a Hyatt hotel, a villa, golf course, equestrian center and a golf academy.

Q. Are you responsible for all those properties?

A. Our area covers all of those properties.

Q. How long have you been with the company?

A. I've been with Kyo-ya since 2002 when I left Starwood and joined Kyo-ya Co. on the asset management side.

Q. You've been in the hotel business for most of your life?

A. I started in 1969 and had the opportunity to work at the Princess Ka'iulani Hotel and worked through various hotels in Hawai'i as well as on the Mainland. In 1966, I worked as a busboy in the Monarch Room at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel and that was while I was going to school. I also had the opportunity to work for the Kelley hotel chain at a small hotel on Kuhio Avenue called the Islander Hotel. That sort of was my start in the business.

Q. You always had an interest in the travel industry?

A. Not really. I originally started at the University of Southern California as an engineering major and found out I wasn't doing as well as I should be with my grades. I came back to Hawai'i and enrolled in what at that time was called the Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Management Program, which became the Travel Industry Management school.

Q. Being in the business for so long, you've seen the peaks and valleys of the industry. How would you characterize the current state of tourism?

A. This situation has been caused by several things, not just local things like Aloha Airlines, but also some global issues. The high fuel costs, some of the issues that are going on in the financial community, have had an impact that probably are going to change the way that we do business in Hawai'i, as well as in other tourist destinations. Hawai'i in particular could be impacted a little bit more because of our great dependency on the airlines. Frankly, 99 percent of our visitors come by air and that's going to be so important to us. That's something which we're going to have to continue to look at and be very cautious of and hopefully, not just the industry is looking at it, but government officials at all levels should be concerned about it also.

Q. What is Kyo-ya doing or what can it do to counteract what's going on?

A. From an airlift standpoint, there really isn't much you can do. In terms of Hawai'i, the destination, you need to continue to keep Hawai'i in their minds so that they understand that Hawai'i is a great place to travel to. Yes, it may be a little bit more expensive, but it's still a great value for the dollar.

Q. Is it a matter of more marketing?

A. We need to work collectively with the other Starwood hotels to continue to market our properties and make this their choice. But we also have to work collectively as a destination area, not just Waikiki, but Ka'anapali and the various areas through the HVCB as well as the Hawai'i Tourism Authority and the various visitor organizations to put our monies together to work toward getting people to make Hawai'i their choice.

Q. Any guess as to how long this downturn will last?

A. I'm generally an optimist so I would hope that we'll be able to weather the storm. The summer will prove to be a real testing area for us to see whether or not people will still be able to get to Hawai'i from the standpoint of the amount of lift that's available, but also from the standpoint of are they going to be willing to pay the higher prices? Once summer is over, I think we'll have a better handle on what's going to happen the rest of the year. Up until now, frankly, most of us have weathered pretty well. There's been some downturn, but not as much as I had thought it would be.

Q. Your hotels have or are going through major renovations. Is that necessary to be competitive in the industry?

A. Definitely. Customers' needs and expectations change over the years. What you need to do is look at that and say, "How do we best serve these needs that the customers have?" Fortunately for our portfolio here in Wakiki we have four different hotels that attract four different markets. The Westin at the Moana, that's a certain clientele. The luxury collection, which will be the brand for the Royal Hawaiian, that appeals to another clientele. And the Sheraton Waikiki is sort of the center of excitement and fun, it's the large hotel. The Princess Ka'iulani is for the more budget-conscious.

Q. You've worked at some Mainland hotels?

A. In 1969, when I graduated from the University of Hawai'i, I joined a management training program for a couple of years. I decided that it would probably be in my best interests to perhaps leave and go away for a while and hone my management skills at places that were different than Hawai'i. It was a great experience. I worked in Los Angeles, Houston, San Francisco, so it was a great experience for me. I also had the opportunity to work throughout the Neighbor Islands, so that was really nice.

Q. Are there other challenges that face you or the industry?

A. Perhaps the challenges that still face us are the other destinations. The tourist industry is a global industry and there are many, many other destinations that are advertising quite a bit and marketing a lot to attract people to their part of the world. What Hawai'i needs to do is continue to set itself above the other destinations because of its people. There are a lot of good resort areas with great beaches and great sun, but what makes a difference here in Hawai'i is that spirit of caring and sharing that our people have and I think that's so important. It's something which we have to be cautious that we never lose. I understand that and I think local people and people that have lived here for a long time understand that. We need to make sure that that truly permeates throughout our industry and we get to share that with visitors from afar.

Q. How do you approach your job and your business?

A. In the hospitality business our job is to service the customers and if we do a good job of servicing the customers and providing them the quality of experience that they want in their vacation time here then we're able to be a profitable company. So whatever we do, our motive is to make sure that our customers go away feeling that they truly had a great experience at our hotels and that also goes for the people who work here. Our job is to make sure our internal customers, our own associates who work here, feel really good about coming to work. So we really have to meet the needs of two customers.