Column: HTA’S crucial mission goes well beyond tourism marketing

The beheading of the Hawaii Tourism Authority — via a just-passed bill that cuts off HTA’s funding source — is yet another red flag that the state Legislature is choosing to ignore its institutional memory of the years of struggle it took to get to this point in attempting to manage the total impact of tourism on Hawaii (“Bill cuts off Hawaii Tourism Authority’s funding source,” Star-Advertiser, May 10).

Tourism, when not properly managed, creeps into every corner of island life. Locals and visitors often find themselves having to elbow their way in and out of shared spaces including beaches, parks, restaurants, highways, airports, shopping centers, bed-and-breakfast neighborhoods, to name a few.

So, while the HTA will continue to access funds to maintain market share and keep visitors coming, it will lose its funding to continue pursuing a holistic destination management strategy.

The visitor industry can be a very good thing when its scale is properly managed by employing “sustainable community-friendly growth models” that creates a fair exchange of value between the visitors, the visited, and the impacted island environments.

HTA’s “destination management” objective is critical to the industry’s immediate and long-term future. HTA must be allowed to retain its financial capacity to address the deeply seated sense of disenfranchisement of local communities that feel separated from their own spaces and a hurtful loss of a Hawaiian sense of place.

Prior to 1998, in the absence of HTA, there was no center of gravity to manage the rising challenges of industry growth on our people and towns. Yes, there was the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau (HVCB), a membership organization composed largely of, and driven by, industry players. But the HVCB was and still is dedicated specifically to marketing Hawaii. There was no organization with the statutory authority to assume the responsibility of destination management that would deal with all aspects of the impact of tourism.

So in 1998, after years of contentious political dialogue stretching back to the days of Gov. John Burns, the HTA was established under Gov. Ben Cayetano. HTA’s mission was not limited to marketing as was its nongovernment predecessor, the HVCB.

HTA’s purpose continues to include marketing as a high priority, but to also ramp up attention to the plethora of other industry growth impacts that are seriously affecting the quality of everyday life for Hawaii’s people. Most important is that HTA’s governance and bellwethering has become far more inclusive of, and friendly to, the broader community and important community-based stakeholders.

While the HTA has had its challenges since its inception in 1998 as to how to put a head on the octopus, the nature of the board’s authority and autonomy to manage a budget has afforded it the opportunity for intervention on so many fronts that desperately need attention.

The entire intended public policy objective is now put at serious risk. The state Legislature has passed House Bill 862 that strips the HTA budget of all funds except money for selling Hawaii. This is an insanely conceived legislative initiative, dropping out of the sky, deliberately avoiding any legitimate community engagement and completely forgetful of the decades it took to get this far in what seems a brazen attempt to bring HTA to its knees.

We are returning to the age of our ignorance and polarizing politics, and abdicating the future of Hawaii’s people to those who do not live here.

Peter Apo is president of The Peter Apo Company, LLC, a Hawaiian values-based management strategies consulting firm; he formerly served as a state legislator and an Office of Hawaiian Affairs trustee.