Visit West Hollywood, the city’s visitor and tourism organization, has announced the appointment of Sean Keliiholokai (Kay-lee’-ee-hoe’-low-kye) as vice president of business development for the organization.
Keliiholokai will be charged with growing the local tourism industry through hotel and lodging occupancy, focusing on the city’s top international visitor markets, including Australia/New Zealand and United Kingdom and domestic target markets, while pursuing business in global markets with connections to Los Angeles International Airport.
Keliiholokai was previously the executive director for Visit Dana Point, a destination marketing organization servicing South Orange County’s luxury coastal region. He has extensive experience in sales from the Greater Ontario Convention and Visitors Bureau as its Director of Sales & Marketing, and leading tourism companies such as Hyatt, Marriott International and the Disneyland Resort. He is a native Southern Californian.
Tom Kiely, president and CEO of Visit West Hollywood, said of Keliiholokai’s appointment. “Sean possesses the kind of talent and experience we deem necessary in today’s competitive destination environment. His DMO (destination marketing) experience and his contacts made him the hands-down choice for our team.”
Keliiholokai will report to Kiely who has an extensive background in destination and tourism sales.
Keliiholokai is a certified hospitality sales professional (CHSP) who holds a Masters of Hospitality Administration from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and a B.S. in Business Administration from Biola University.
speaking of money being spent, whatever happened to the west hollywood promotional video that Wehoville wrote about months ago? seems it’s no longer available and i’m curious why it was taken down?
How did that happen?
What are the measure and goals for this organization? There is a lot of money being spent but you never here of the accomplishments of what they book or how they are helping the hotels. There seems to be a lot of changes there in the last few years without much oversight and seeing what all these highly paid people do.
They call it ” Hospitality”. What about hospitality for the residents that call this home?
Whatever the salary the cost is too great to encourage droves of tourists coming to our city little respect and profit from it mightily. Something is not right here.
and we probably pay him $500,000 per year like every other City Employee.