Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 18, Number 12, 1 December 2001 — Kai Nalu Surf Tours finds its surfers surfing the Net [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Kai Nalu Surf Tours finds its surfers surfing the Net

By Caitriona Kearns When 25,000 computer users visited mauisurfing.com in November 2000, John Nauka realized that his startup surf tour business was getting serious attention on the web and he was doing something right with his website. He had also just received a business loan from the Office of Hawaiian Affair's Native Hawaiian Revolving Loan Fund to help further develop his business. lt all started on a whim when Nauka's son, Kalei, suggested they create a website for the family. The thought provoked in Nauka a rekin-

dling of his youth when he was a competing amateur in professional surf competitions. "I always thought that some day I'd be back into it; some way or somehow I'd have my feet back into the surfing industry," he said. This was his ehanee to get back into surfing and īun a business in whieh he would use his 15 years of work experience and the skills he learned in getting his business management degree. Nauka decided that he would provide personalized escorted surf tours on Maui and O'ahu to small groups of up to four people and wanted to test the concept on the

surfing industry. His first step was to look for feedback. "We sent out surveys to 100 surfing-related eompanies like Quiksilver and asked questions whether a surf tour like this would be viable; if they would look forward to taking it," he said. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Nauka was assured in his thinking of this new business idea and ready to proceed. He hired an 1 8 year-old webmaster who quickly developed a functional e-commerce site from the outline he provided. What propelled the onslaught of visitors to the site was choosing "surf tours" as a keyword for mauisurfing.com's homepage and registering it with all the major search engines. "If you go to the major search engines like Yahoo, Google, Ask Jeeves, Excite and HotBot, enter 'surf tours' on the search, and we're the top site," he boasted. Driving traffic to his website has taken a fortuitous route in that the search engines redirected Internet surfers with a select interest in surf tours to mauisurfing.com. With the help of an $8,000 microloan from the Native Hawaiian Revolving Loan Fund, Nauka was able to fund advertising to help drive more surfers to his site and keep bookings coming in. He pays $200 a month for a banner ad on swell.com, the most popular surfing

site on the lnternet; $1,200 a year for advertising in Surfer Magaz.ine\ and just started advertising with Surf Magazine. These two magazines are distributed internationally to a targeted demographic of approximately 25,000 surfers a month per magazine. With the exception of eaneellations on tours after the Sept. 1 1 attack, business has been steady and now his tours are solidly booked , ^ through the end of December. Tours are customized for eaeh group depending on their surfing ability and include air, hotel, breakfast, luneh and all transportation either on Maui or O'ahu. Nauka escorts all tours himself but anticipates eontracting out the running of the O'ahu tours to friends as he is finding he is stretched for time. One way he keeps in touch with his customers is by writing a bi-weekly newsletter he transmits by email to a list of 700 in whieh he shares stories of tours taken and weather conditions in Hawai'i. He gets a lot of positive feedback on the newsletter from prospective tour goers and past customers who want to eome back for more. "People freezing in Minnesota and Chicago winters like hearing from me," he smiled. For more information about OHA's loan fund, eall 594-1924. For Kai Nalu Surf Tours, eall 808-579-9937. ■

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SURF'S UP! John Nauka, pictured here, got an OHA loan whieh helped create a surf tour business that is fueled primarily through traffic on his website, www. mauisurfing.com. In winter months, calls are received from surfers in cold spots around the world longing to surf in Hawai'i. Photo: Caitriona Kearns