Members of the American Association of Geographers, who were in Honolulu for their 2024 annual meeting, volunteered Sunday during an ocean and beach park cleanup at Magic Island where tons of trash were removed from the polluted peninsula and ocean.

The “Dive for Earth Day” event, which ran from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., saw AAG members join other volunteers in support of the nonprofit Kanu Hawai‘i’s “Pledge to Our Keiki,” 808ne.ws/Pledge ToOurKeiki, a keiki-driven invitation to visitors to give back during their stay, and local residents to improve stewardship. Many divers attended in partnership with Aqualung, PADI and Nudi Wear.

The pledge also was at the forefront of a news conference Friday at the Hawai‘i Convention Center where the Hawai‘i Visitors and Convention Bureau, AAG and National Conference on Race and Ethnicity gave $20,000 to Kanu Hawai‘i. The money will expand visitor stewardship opportunities beyond the Malama Hawai‘i Volunteer Dashboard, gohawaii.com/malama. It was launched earlier this month by Kanu Hawai‘i and the Hawai‘i Tourism Authority to connect volunteers with the community groups and nonprofits that need them.

AAG’s four-day meeting that ended Saturday brought more than 4,500 participants to the convention center for a conference themed “Aloha, Aina and Reciprocity.” NCORE’s event, which is slated for May 28 to June 1, is themed “Pledge to Our Keiki” and is expected to bring more than 5,500 attendees.

Keone Kealoha, executive director of Kanu Hawaii, said during Friday’s news conference, “Collectively these two conferences have over 10,000 attendees in Hawaii contributing more than $20 million into the local economy. These are big figures, and it’s been a long time coming to direct these resources — the energy of these folks — directly back to our students and our schools to make real impact in real places in our Hawaii.”

Teri Orton, Hawai‘i Convention Center general manager, said support from AAG and NCORE for Kanu Hawai‘i’s “Pledge to Our Keiki” and celebration of Earth Day 2024 “is proof that regenerative tourism is important for groups that choose Hawaii for their meetings and conferences.”

“By offering opportunities for attendees to participate in local efforts to protect Hawaii’s natural resources, organizations such as AAG and NCORE help bring awareness not just to their combined attendees, but also to future conferences coming to Hawaii that we all have an obligation to pledge, donate and act on behalf of this special place,” Orton said.

She added that the convention center’s “industry- leading environmental practices, such as our carbon offset program, also help reduce the impact of our meetings and events, and provide organizers and attendees with customized, turnkey options to protect our natural resources.”

Dan Hoffend, executive vice president of convention centers at ASM Global, which has 91 convention centers in its portfolio, including HCC, told the Hawai‘i Tourism Authority board at its March 28 monthly meeting that HCC’s decision to put a price on the number of trees that an event needs to reforest in order to be carbon-neutral is industry-leading.

“In today’s environment, especially in the corporate events, which is very important for the success of this facility and many others, there’s a carbon budget now,” he said.

Carbon budgets, which set a limit on the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that employees are allowed to generate through their business travel, are growing more common. HCC’s support for regenerative tourism has been an advantage as it seeks to recover group business travel after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Orton said, “We have made a strong comeback with citywide/offshore groups for our fiscal year 2024 and fiscal year 2025. Fifty of the offshore business in these years we either had on the books for that period or moved it from the pandemic years to these future dates.”

She said the other 50% is new business that HVCB put on the books in the past two years.

“This is a clear indicator that the booking window has shortened and that the MCI (meetings, conventions and incentives) market is getting back to face-to-face meetings again,” Orton said. “We have not fully recovered to the number of citywides (events that bring a large amount of people to a city) we have had pre-pandemic. But our sales team is actively prospecting business to get us there.”

Orton said HCC has 14 more citywides to host for the remainder of the year (May to December).

“The 2024 calendar year is strong for us, with 20 citywides that we are scheduled to host at the center,” she said. “Four of these events were licensed in (the first quarter) of this year and represent $50.9 (million) in economic impact.”

Orton said fiscal years 2024 and 2025 are the strong­est years post-pandemic for citywide/offshore, and HCC and HVCB are working on converting more tentative leads to definite bookings.

“As the current short-term booking cycle continues, we are seeing opportunities increasing for 2027,” she said.

Hawaii’s regenerative push is an offset to the long-held concern that group trips to Hawaii may be perceived as a boondoggle.

NCORE Program Administrator Justin Lincks said historically, NCORE has held its annual meetings in Tier 1 locations on the Mainland such as New Orleans, New York and San Francisco.

“There was some resistance to us choosing Hawaii from our administrators because so many people look upon this as a place of leisure, and it’s been intentionally cast as a place where important things don’t happen,” Lincks said. “In choosing to come here, we wanted to signal that we don’t agree with that, and also, we felt that it was an opportunity to center Pacific Islander experiences and Native Hawaiian experiences.”

Lincks said Hawaii’s regenerative tourism was critical to NCORE’s selection.

“It is something we consider as being in solidarity with place-based community engagement, and it is also deeply important to our values around environmental well-being and taking action to address climate change,” he said. “It’s really important to connect our movement to the health of the planet. We don’t believe communities can experience well-being without social justice and without environmental health.”

Matt Lane, Kanu Hawai‘i’s program director for “Pledge to Our Keiki” and Earth Day Volunteer Month, said residents, especially students, benefit when international and national conferences choose to meet in Hawaii.

“We have amazing events like Earth Day on a global scale in Hawaii. It’s a real testament to what our kids are doing. Their events are not just local; they are global,” Lane said. “Our kids need to be the lead, and they are stepping up to do it through the pledge.”

Lotus Yasuda, a Waipahu High School sophomore who recruited celebrity Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson to serve as an ambassador for “Pledge to Our Keiki,” said, “We need more people like ‘The Rock’ who are supporting and spreading the pledge not only among Hawaii, but worldwide.”

During Friday’s news conference, Yasuda represented on behalf of Kanu Hawai‘i more than 40 student ambassadors on five islands and over 170,000 students in the Department of Education and their families. She talked about some of the student- organized events that were happening throughout the islands over the weekend and today for Earth Day.

She also praised AAG and NCORE for their support and put out a broader call to spread the message of the pledge and get more people to make a commitment to its values.

“In the future we hope that people are coming to Hawaii and they care. But we also want to make sure that our residents care as well so that we are all playing a part to create a good Hawaii,” Yasuda said.