When it comes to tourism, long gone are the days when Aunt Mabel’s or Uncle Jiro’s word-of-mouth back home was enough to “sell” Hawaii as a great place to visit. Nowadays, tourism relies on branding, market studies and targeted marketing, across an array of ad platforms and social media. Heck, the Hawaii Tourism Authority is even investing millions of dollars on face-recognition software in an innovative strategy to attract millennials.

So it’s good for the local tourism industry to keep its pulse on sectors with growth potential, such as LGBT travelers. Long recognized as a niche market here, the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community is now being more closely assessed in HTA’s first market intelligence survey of LGBT visitors, who generally earn and spend more than non-gay travelers.

In this land of aloha, as long as they’re respectful visitors, we say “e komo mai” — welcome, one and all.