The Honolulu Star-Advertiser’s July 14 editorial titled, “Hawaii Tourism Authority must evolve, adapt to survive,” speaks largely to the Hawai‘i Tourism Authority of the past and not the community-focused organization we are today.
Fulfilling our responsibility to our community through destination stewardship – prioritizing residents’ needs, managing tourism, developing our workforce, caring for our environment, and reinvesting in our community – does not mean sacrificing economic stability. Quite the opposite. Both destination marketing and destination stewardship are essential to balance Hawaii’s tourism economy, like sister hulls on a voyaging canoe.
HTA has been in a major transformation since 2020, embracing and balancing the dual, interconnected missions of destination marketing and destination stewardship. We worked with communities to develop and enact Destination Management Action Plans on each island, engaging hundreds of community organizations and partners along the way.
In 2021, our board created the Ho‘okahua committee specifically to focus on community and destination stewardship. A Destination Stewardship arm within HTA was established in 2023, led by our first ever Chief Stewardship Officer Kalani Ka‘ana‘ana. The passage of Senate Bill 3364 explicitly adds destination management to the law that governs HTA, bringing that law into alignment with the work we have already been doing.
Trust is hard to earn and easy to lose. Our experience in the last legislative session shows that HTA’s hard work is being recognized by our leaders. We have a recurring legislatively appropriated budget for the first time since 2020 and talk of eliminating HTA is gone.
Tourism’s challenges and opportunities extend far beyond the reach of any one government agency. That’s why engaging communities, our fellow government entities, and the visitor industry itself remains critical to moving forward. HTA will continue to convene those entities.
Our decisions are informed by the best data available. Today, that includes information from our arriving passenger surveys, in-depth follow-up surveys, marketing effectiveness research, and a variety of sources ranging from anonymized mobile phone location data to lodging occupancy and rates. Tomorrow, that will include even more information on visitor behaviors and patterns gathered by our smart tourism initiatives, including our destination app.
We agree that Hawaii has many needs to fill, and continued adaptation of the state’s tourism agency is a must. The fact that HTA pursued a study of tourism governance for Hawaii demonstrates our proactiveness to take a hard look at ourselves, be open to new ideas and evolve for and with our communities and the generations ahead.
As our Board Chair Mufi Hannemann says often, this will not be a study that sits on a shelf. Our board will be having robust conversations in the coming months about the findings and our path forward in adopting the recommendations that make sense for our community.
Mahina Paishon is vice chair of the HTA board; Stephanie Iona serves on the board representing Kauai; they co-chair a group studying the future of Hawaii’s tourism governance.
