Fame but Considerably Less Fortune for G-8 Host

It’s less than a week until the leaders of the world’s most powerful nations and their entourages descend on the tiny island of Okinawa for their annual summit.

Most hotels are already fully booked for the gathering of the Group of 8. Everywhere around this island ringed by azure seas hang the participants’ national flags. Even local sake bottles sport the leaders’ caricatures.

So why, despite all the hoopla, are so many merchants and hotel operators feeling so glum?

Because business is lousy--far worse than normal at this time of summer, when cash registers would ordinarily be ringing up the year’s highest sales.

Instead of hosting the free-spending young Japanese tourists who usually swarm to Okinawa during high season, hotel rooms are taken up by swarms of bureaucrats and an estimated 20,000 police officers from Japan’s other islands.

These men--and they are primarily men--have more important things on their minds than dining out, frolicking on the beach, renting scuba gear and blowing their money on omiage, the virtually obligatory gifts that Japanese bring co-workers and friends when returning from vacation. As for the hordes of police, even on their one day off a week they aren’t allowed to drink, so sake and beer sales at the hotels and bars have plummeted.

“There aren’t many tourists here,” laments Miyoko Tokumura, manager of the Kokumanshiki Lacquer Shop in downtown Naha, the prefectural capital, which sells the exquisite red and black dishes and boxes for which Okinawa is known.

The only things selling these days in Tsuyoba, Okinawa’s touristy pottery center, are the clay figurines that are a cross between a lion and a dog and are said to ward off evil spirits--or a bad economy.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. When the late Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi spearheaded the move to hold the summit on this resort island, his goal was to boost Okinawa’s beleaguered economy. The island has been hit hard by Japan’s recession, with little indigenous industry beyond tourism. As a result, Okinawa and the neighboring islands that make up the Okinawa island group suffer one of the highest unemployment rates in Japan: 8.2%, compared with the 4.6% national average.

The mood is also sour over controversial U.S. military bases, which occupy about 20% of the main island of Okinawa. Simmering tensions have threatened to come to a boil over the arrest earlier this month of a Marine who allegedly molested a 14-year-old girl.

Of course, everyone is hoping that Okinawa’s three days in the international spotlight next weekend will ultimately pay off in higher sales down the road. That could help make up for the huge outlays invested in a heliport and room upgrades.

No one is grumbling very loudly or publicly: Nearly everyone, it appears, wants to cooperate with the slogan, posted everywhere, that says, “Let’s have a successful summit.”

Still, many merchants say privately that they aren’t sure if the sacrifice will be worth it. The memories are fresh of the big bucks that never materialized from a marine exhibit, known as the Aquapolis, more than a decade ago.

The locals would be in a far better mood had the summit been held in an off-peak month such as June or December, when they wouldn’t be sacrificing their regular tourism revenue. Moreover, it’s also typhoon season, and such a storm on the eve of the summit would be a disaster on every score: Contingency plans have been made to relocate the gathering to Tokyo if a storm is threatening anywhere in the vicinity, locals said. (A Foreign Ministry spokesman declined to confirm alternative sites.)

Instead of boosting business--even at the island’s nicest beaches in Nago, on the northwest side of the island, where the summit will be held--sales from April to June slid 20% from the previous year, says Isao Kitashiro, sales director of the Busena Terrace Beach Resort, where Japanese delegates will stay during the summit.

Even though it is perhaps the loveliest resort on the island and is adjacent to the government-owned conference center where summit leaders will meet, the resort’s travails are indicative of those occurring throughout Okinawa.

For example, Busena Terrace’s rooms, which usually command as much as $600 per night in July and August, are instead full of Secret Service agents and police who are paying about $160 per night.

“Normally, customers are in and out in three days and buy lots of souvenirs,” sales manager Kitashiro says dourly.

Many tourists canceled or postponed bookings when advised by the hotel that “private eyes” would be watching them constantly. Although the men posted everywhere in the hotel try to look inconspicuous in sports clothes, their earphones are a dead giveaway.

“They’re so obvious,” says guest Hideaki Yamasaki, 19.

Fire drills and practice runs regularly interrupt the hotel’s tranquillity, and disturb visitors lying by the beach. It’s all preparation in case there’s a fire and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori needs to be evacuated.

Busena Terrace sent its employees to Tokyo to learn better service, and it offered special classes to bone up on English for the summit.

Kitashiro is hoping the Japanese government will recognize and reward the hotel’s sacrifices.

“We expect a lot for the government to hold many future events here,” says Kitashiro, “because we spent a lot and gave up a lot for the summit.”