Lani Medina Weigert is an independent marketing and customer service consultant who also co-owns Ali‘i Kula Lavender, Hawai‘i’s premier lavender farm. Lani has 30 years of experience in tour and hospitality marketing as Director of Sales & Operation for one of Hawai‘i’s largest tour wholesalers, Pleasant Holidays. Lani understands how to market and evoke connection with her customers through marketing a “lifestyle” rather than a single product.
Lani’s business innovations are relevant to any business starting out or wanting to go to the next level. Her energetic communication skills, positive attitude, and contagious enthusiasm make her a valued speaker. She has created a unique business model grounded in the “value center of Aloha,” and through collaboration has taken the revised saying of “It Takes a Village to Raise a Business” to new and tangible heights. Lani knows firsthand the art of marketing and the many steps of delivering exemplary customer service through proven systems and processes. A Native Hawaiian, born and raised in Hawai‘i, she merges rural and small-town challenges with unlimited innovation and creativity to grow her business into a multimillion dollar organization. After years of being in the travel industry Lani joined forces with business partner, Ali‘i Chang, co-owner and lavender grower of Ali‘i Kula Lavender. With Chang’s 40 years of farming and horticulture and Lani’s 30 years of travel and hospitality, they have created the premier agritourism venue in Hawai‘i, attracting over 150,000 visitors a year to their 13.5 acre farm.
Lani is the president of the statewide nonprofit Hawai`i AgriTourism Association, which focuses on guiding farmers to supplement their incomes through value-added products and agritourism activities. The organization also provides training on customer service to ensure a positive guest experience for farm visitors. Lani is also a board member for the Agricultural Leadership Foundation of Hawai‘i, Maui Economic Development Board, and Kamehameha Schools Alumni Association. She is a member of the North American Direct Marketing Association, Maui Chamber of Commerce, Hawai‘i Department of Agriculture’s Seal of Quality and Maui County Farm Bureau.
Lani also works with her daughter Pomai, (who is the marketing and community relations coordinator for Ali‘i Kula Lavender, focusing on all website and social media marketing), to revitalize an unproductive 9-acre school farm at Maui High School into a thriving, revenue-generating operation by collaborating with all the career-track school programs to horizontally integrate and sustain both the ag program and the Maui community at large. With aging farmers soon to retire, the pair hope their efforts will raise interest in students to set a career track in agriculture and become the next generation of farmers.
Pomai Weigert is the Marketing & Community Relations Coordinator for Ali‘i Kula Lavender (AKL Maui),a multi-generational, family-owned, native Hawaiian agritourism business in Hawai‘i. With her experience in travel and tourism combined with agriculture she has shared proven methods in building generational and cultural gaps, creating new niche markets , and bringing her company into the “high tech” 21st century of technology without losing its “high touch” authenticity. Pomai‘s primary focus at AKL Maui is marketing to the “New” buyer on the world wide web. Her forte is building collaborations in the community to create products that can be sold to a larger market through social media, website design, search engine optimization and social science.
Pomai teaches a Grass Roots Marketing Class at the University of Hawaii Maui Campus that focuses on building a strong company foundation, customer service and standards, marketing with little capital and increasing your profits in a changing economy.
Pomai has developed a community outreach marketing arm for Ali‘i Kula Lavender called “Sustainable Aloha” which has transformed their public relations and marketing efforts through community revitalization. Her goal is to build economically sustainable & culturally aware communities in Hawaii through education and collaboration on local & global levels. Her knowledge and vision of the existing and next generation buyer has taken their small agritourism business to a new level of generating revenue and gaining a broader market of buyers.
Pomai works closely with her mother (Lani Weigert) on a number of non-profit boards locally and nationally to continually integrate the ideas and innovations of the up and coming generation.