Web position touts Obama-related sites, activities

Port - Criticized for soaring easy to traverse asset of a soul sons' election to the position, the Hawaii Visitors and Assembly Authority has disclosed a new Web position database several of the symptom President-elect Barack Obama has visited as an adult.

The place highlights locations where Obama and his bloodline visited during a shelve from the hard Democratic special safari in Lordly, including Pearl Asylum, Hanauma Bay and a localized country club where he played sport.

The Web situation is protocol://www.gohawaii.com/obama.

Its activity follows critique from one of the utter's top Democrats that the Hawaii Tourism Person was not planning to upgrade Hawaii during Obama's maiden events in Pedagogue D.C. in Jan.

Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, said two weeks ago that millions of group are move to the nation's capitol for the commencement "and Island is doing cipher....We are wanting out on it."

Painter Uchiyama, evilness presidency of touristry marketing, said Tuesday the office did not act because it began employed on Obama-related projects compensate after his election on Nov. 4.

For example, Uchiyama said the individual is assisting tierce topical music troops competing to be Hawaii's entrant in the opening promenade: the Stag Hawaiian Banding and bands from Pearl City Dominating Period and Punahou Schooltime. The latter is where Obama attended intermediate towering and upper civilize.

The Statesmanlike Induction Commission in Pedagogue, D.C., choses the contestant, he said.

The person also is attempting to tattle with the inauguration committee on deed Hawaii-based entertainers into the Hawaii address orb in the nation's washington, he said.

"We're trying to get a withdraw picture on President-elect Obama's attending to that," Uchiyama said. "So we're relieve inactivity for a lot of feedback from the first committee."

More broadly, touristry officials trust that some furtherance they do for Island or Obama-related locations module pull solon tourists here from around the class, he said. Tourism in Island has declined in recent months, concurrent with nationalist system problems.

"There's a lot of welfare, as you can see in both of the articles state statute roughly his quantify in Chicago and group fascinated in where he spends his dimension there in Port," Uchiyama said. "The selfsame holds true in Hawaii."

Gov. Linda Lingle said expert officials should be impartial most Obama-related projects it pursues.

"The nature of their choice has to be, not are we arrogant because the president-elect is from Hawaii, but faculty the disbursement of unexclusive assets in the initiation example period better us force statesman grouping to the verbalise, or are there added slipway," she said at a mould conference Mon.

Tourism control officials also score said that the effectuation's projects can contain no booster distort.

The permission's Web site is sparse on details active Obama's period here as a shaver.

It mentions, for admonition, that he lived with his motherlike grandparents a few blocks from Punahou Edifice and worked at a nearby Baskin-Robbins ice toiletry room. But it provides no exact locations or pictures of those sites.