Hogan's hard work, family and blarney create Hawaiian empire.

Hogan's hard work, family and blarney create Hawaiian empire Call him Mr. Tourism. The Hawaiian Senate did in June when it recognized Edward J. Hogan for bringing more than two million tourists to the island during his 28-year career as president and owner of Pleasant Hawaiian Holidays, Westlake Village.

Pleasant Hawaiian is not Hogan's only corporate success, either.

His holdings include six Hawaiian hotels, including the Kahana Beach Resort and the Royal Lahaina Golf and Tennis Resort in Maui, and the Sheraton Coconut Beach in Kauai. He also owns the Erawan Garden Hotel in Indian Wells; the Pleasant Business Center a Westlake Village office park where Hogan's operations are headquartered; Westlake Travel Service; California Missions Inns; and a 20 percent share in Wet 'N Wild, a Texas-based water slide chain.

He and his partners are putting the finishing touches on a $110 million sales of four Wet 'N Wild amusement parks to a Japanese group. The sale will give Hogan more time to devote to his latest venture -- a quarterly magazine called Hawaii Business that will debut in January.

Aside from operating these diverse privately held companies -- Hogan says they produce revenues of about $300 million annually -- he is a salesman, model, ad-man, and sometimes, a poet.

Hogan's is a modern-day Horacio Alger story with a strange twist. He contends it was not driving ambition that got him where he is today -- it was actually bad luck.

"I never wanted to start my own company," Hogan says. "If everything had gone as planned, I probably would have been a very good, loyal company man -- like the old Irish cop."

Hogan has the gift of blarney, it seems. The affable, silver-haired executive answers questions the roundabout way. He tells stories. He urges visitors to take trips.

Then there's his home-spun verse.

"Jurisprudence," is Hogan's rhyme about his company's recent brush with the Hawaiian legal system (Two Chinese businessmen sued him for more than $100 million, contending that Hogan interfered with their previously arranged purchase of the Royal Lahaina hotel,):

It is not Robert Forst, but Hogan gets his point across.

Hoganesque advertising copy was equally effective in the early days of his quickly growing travel company. Hogan wrote such gems as: "Don't be a dummy," in which Hogan, bare chested and wearing a blond wig, posed with two mannequins and explained that only a nitwit would pass up bargains like his Pleasant Hawaiian Holidays.

Later ads featured the Hogan family. Indeed, the Hogan's four children and two in-laws, all now work for Plesant Hawaiian.

But in the beginning, it was just Hogan, his wife and a dog.

The Hogans started their travel service in 1959 after the airline that Hogan had been working for failed. Airline failures were common in those days. So when he began searching for a job, a friend suggested Hogan start his own shop. At least then Hogan would know in advance if the company were about to go under.

Ed and Lynn Hogan opened up a small retial travel agency appropriately named Pleasant Travel Service in Point Pleasant, N.J., with $10,000 in savings. Success came slowly.

In a company newsletter, Hogan says he finally got his business going by joining the Rotary Club, the Chamber of Commerce -- anything that would allow him to meet people who might want to buy his tours. It worked.

In 1962 the Hogans cleared $16,000, a comfortable living then. but because the Hogans were increasingly specializing in Hawaiian tours, they moved the agency to the West Coast.

They settled in Van Nuys and started again. Eventually they began organizing tours rather than just selling other companies' packages. Later, Hogan bought hotels, and started new programs until Pleasant became the travel conglomerate that it is today.

Work is no picnic, though. Hogan's kids are instructed to do a better job than their peers or riska permanent, unpaid vacation. Hogan, himself, works up to 12 hours a day.

All this has made him wealthy.

He won't discuss his companies' profitability, but it is prosperous enough to allow him to give Loyola Marymount University $1 million. He gave a similar amount to fund a scholarship foundation for Hawaiian youth.

"It's no secret how he got where he is," says Klaus Billep, national director of the Americna Society of Travel Agents-Southern California. "He works tremendously hard and he's built up a good reputation.