Keeping Atlantis Adventures Afloat

As the president and CEO of Atlantis Adventures, Ronald Williams’ water world includes subs, cruise ships and Sea Life Park

experience it for themselves, says Williams. Sometimes the latter is the only way to show them how incredible it really is.

“It’s like, ‘Wow,’”Williams says when asked what Atlantis’ motto is. “We really try to ‘wow’ our guests through education and fun. We try to exceed their expectations.”

Mother Nature is typically cooperative in the area of expectations, says Williams, in that 90 percent of their passengers say their expectations were exceeded on their Atlantis adventure.

Hawaii’s weather permits Atlantis to run operations almost 365 days a year.

“The only thing that really knocks us out are the Kona winds,” says Williams. “Once you get in the submarine, you’d never know what the environment is outside, but it’s about loading and unloading passengers safely.”

The Atlantis corporation owns and operates submarines in 10 locations worldwide including the Caribbean and Guam. It’s entertained more than 10 million guests across the globe, probably half of whom were in Hawaii, and continues to maintain a spotless safety record.

Williams has a birds-eye view from his office on the 16th floor of the Pan Am building on Kapiolani Boulevard. He can easily keep track of weather conditions for Atlantis’ fleet just by stepping out onto his balcony.

“I love my view,” he tells MidWeek. “I can see our submarines and Navatek pass by every day. Today is a good day for our subs because there are nice trade winds.”

Williams’ days can run long, considering he wakes at 5 a.m. every morning at his home on Maui, paddles his canoe in the Kahului harbor from 5:30 to 7 a.m. Williams has paddled since he was in high school, and was a paddling coach for over a decade. Nowadays, however, he uses his morning paddle to see the ocean from a different perspective.

After his dawn workout,Williams hops on plane to Oahu for the work day. But it’s a trek Williams says he’s happy to make. Still a country boy at heart,Williams knows the fast pace of Honolulu city business, but prefers to spend his down time in the quieter setting of a neighbor island with his wife, Momi, and three children, Whitney, Quinn and Riley.

Over the years he’s lived on Maui, Oahu and the Big Island. After graduating from Hilo High School, he came to study social psychology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and worked to put himself through school.

Williams’ strong work ethic and ability to see the bigger pictures is part of the reason why Atlantis continues to stay afloat even during tough economic times.

“To sustain yourself, you have to continuously improve on what you’re doing in all aspects from customers to employees to market shares,” he says. “Do it the old-fashioned way, make sure you knock on as many doors as possible, asking for the business. Make sure you also keep the quality of your products as high as it can be.”

Williams notes that 9/11 was a paradigm shift for everyone in the attractions industry.

“I think we all had to become more rounded in a marketing approach in all markets,” he says. “Business here in Hawaii is so volatile. We’re really just a speck out here in the Pacific, so there are a lot of factors that would really shut us down.”

Where Atlantis used to focus most of its marketing efforts on Japanese tour groups, they now evenly split their market between Asia and U.S. Mainland tourists. They also looked at different distribution channels, re-did their pricing, and figured out a way to stay top-of-mind with agents and tourists.

“We didn’t look at new things as much as we looked at doing things differently,” says Williams.

Atlantis chose to focus on its core businesses of submarines and cruises on the Navatek I, a boat that employs breakthrough technology called SWATH (Small Waterplane Area Twin Hull), which allows the ship to travel smoothly through rough seas. More than that,Williams has been committed to showing people not only the best of Hawaii from an entertainment and technological standpoint, but also a cultural one.

For example, he hired Ramsay Taum, Native Hawaiian Hospitality Association officer and UH School of Travel Industry Management staff member, to provide lessons on cultural tourism and Hawaiiana to the Atlantis off-shore crew.

“I think what sets Atlantis apart is that we are able to take people where nobody else can take them,” says Williams. “Having all these different ways of educating people makes us very fortunate.”

Atlantis is the only company to operate submarine tours in the state, and the technology of the Navatek I allows the ship to go farther than any other cruise vessel — often from Waikiki as far as Koko Head and Hanauma Bay.

Williams has more than a vested interest in the success of his own organization. For the past three years, he’s been president of the Activities and Attractions Association of Hawaii (A3H), a merger of the Activities Owners Association on Maui and the Hawaii Activities Association on Oahu. The group has more than 240 members statewide, chapters on all islands, and works closely with the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau to promote tourism through state and county agencies and the Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii.

“We’re all interested in making sure Hawaii has its fair share of tourists,” he says. “We merged our intellectual capital to help activities continue to be a good reason why people come here. Our goal is marketing, pre-arrival and lobbying for different issues that affect all of us throughout the state. It’s a great membership.”

Williams says the membership includes everything from submarine rides to luaus to helicopter rides and day excursions.

While the attractions themselves may compete for the visitor dollar, Williams notes the benefit of the association is being able to band together on government regulatory issues and to do marketing as a larger group.

“It’s a big world, out there,” says Williams. “It would be hard for some of us to do that kind of marketing on our own. Cost of doing business in Hawaii continues to be an issue as well. But we really have worldclass activities here, and people outside of Hawaii should know that.”

As far as Atlantis Adventures goes, it will continue to keep an open mind about other possibilities to add to the adventure list.

“I wouldn’t mind leveraging the dinner cruise business in other locations,”Williams says. In the meantime, Atlantis is also in the process of trying to sink the Carthaginian II, a whaling brig in Lahaina Harbor, for the Maui dive site. It’s been a project two years in the making, with no set sink date just yet.

The ocean is such a big part of Hawaii’s appeal for both tourists and locals alike, and Atlantis seems a natural fit.

While the company’s motto, according to Williams, will continue to be “Wow!”, in this reporter’s opinion, a better choice might be, “Holy mackerel!”

All fish jokes aside, however, Atlantis is sure of one thing: They hope to continue to show kama‘aina and malihini what truly is “our Hawaii.”

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