Seventeen couples from China plan to get married today at Hilton Waikoloa Village as cameras from China's popular Tianjin TV beam the ceremony to more than a million Chinese viewers.

It's the second time Tianjin TV has filmed a Chinese wedding show at the oceanfront resort, according to George Applegate, executive director of the Big Island Visitors Bureau.

With the slump in tourism spreading across the state, the Big Island has been feeling the impact of double-digit declines in visitor arrivals. The island has been especially hard-hit by the departure of the two NCL America cruise ships earlier this year.

Visitor arrivals on the Big Island were down 20 percent in October, and more than three-fourths of that decline was attributed to the drop in cruise ship visitors.

Applegate said Big Island visitor officials are excited about the Chinese couples' big wedding for several reasons. It shows the promise of a visitor market that's expected to grow fast with travel restrictions easing for tourists from China and Korea. The wedding/honeymoon market sometimes stays strong when other vacations drop.

"Hawai'i is going to be getting a big increase in Chinese travelers now because of the Memorandum of Understanding signed in December 2007 facilitating group leisure travel to the U.S.," Applegate said.

Now that Hawai'i and other U.S. destinations can promote and market their destinations in China, Applegate is hopeful the Big Island will see an influx of Chinese visitors.

At the Hilton, hotel officials also are excited about the wedding and the potential for increased business.

"We hope that China becomes a major market for weddings at Hilton Waikoloa Village and all of our Hilton resorts in Hawai'i," said Lora Gallagher, regional director of marketing for Hilton Hawaii. "We are especially interested in destination wedding business coming from China."

Gallagher said because most parents in China have only one child to focus on, they often plan an extravagant wedding and honeymoon experience for their child.

Applegate said the Big Island Visitors Bureau sales team just returned from Shanghai, where it participated in the China International Travel Mart with thousands of Chinese travel professionals and consumers.

He said the Big Island faces an additional identity challenge because many people aren't aware that there is a state named Hawai'i as well as an island.

Last year, 12 couples were married at Hilton Waikoloa Village in a Hawaiian ceremony, with Hawaiian music and hula. In 2007, the state welcomed 38,972 visitors from China, according to the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism.

Today's ceremony also will be Hawaiian-inspired, featuring a live performance of the "Hawaiian Wedding Song" by noted kumu hula Nani Lim Yap.

Applegate said the bureau is providing help with the entertainment. "We're translating the words into Chinese so that they will understand," he said.

Through September 2008, 40,535 Chinese visitors have traveled to the state of Hawai'i, representing a 4 percent increase over the same period a year earlier.

Applegate said the wedding/ honeymoon market is particularly desirable because people get married and go on honeymoons irrespective of economic conditions.

Applegate said the Big Island will continue to respond to changing trends. He remembers the late 1990s when Korean Air Lines was on the verge of flying direct flights to Kona. When the economy tanked there, those plans were canceled.

But new agreements on Korean and Chinese visitors offer new hope.

"I'm very excited about the new wave of visitors. We've always diversified our tourism. Japan is what saved Kona," he said.

And Applegate has seen the industry through big changes, from the 1960s when there were fewer than 500 hotel rooms on the Big Island to now, with rooms numbering about 10,000.