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Preoccupations with tourism shift. At the moment, they are moving into discussions about regenerative tourism and bills for new tourism “governance” at the Legislature.

This may be driven in part by debates over “marketing” and “management” among tourism experts and the more immediate high stakes contractual dispute between the and the .

Given the inescapable reality of the hospitality industry in our economy, the state’s assigned roles and responsibilities are important discussions. But there are other matters.

Tourist carrying capacity and destination management issues linger. Gross state carrying capacity numbers (8 million? 10 million? 12 million?) are not that helpful.

Big numbers generate a lot of buzz but they obscure important detail. The carrying capacity concept is best used when applied at ground level because, that’s where the rubber meets the road and that’s where communities tend to experience potholes, speed bumps and traffic jams on the tourism road.

Applied to specific sites, numbers are hugely important and a perfect focus for smart engagement and careful planning.

To its credit, the undertook broad consultations with island-based Steering Committees and produced (“DMAPS”) for each county to be implemented from 2021 to 2024. The idea was to reset tourism in each county.

Beyond their situational analyses, forecasts, and guidance, the DMAPs identified specific hotspots on each island that needed attention, many of them involving wider community pushback. Flashpoint examples, to name just a few, were Kailua Beach and Town on Oahu, Moomomi Beach on Molokai, and Waipio Valley on Hawaii island.

There is no single, perfect approach to managing large numbers of people in small places but there are successes.

Online reservations at Hanauma Bay, for parking at Haena State Park, and for trail reservations at Kalalau help a lot and show inventive applications of technologies but the more sprawling an issue is in its impacts, the greater the need for well-informed local problem solving. Outside expertise coupled with local knowledge and wisdom can produce less sub-optimum and more acceptable outcomes.

One enabling aspect of achieving better “balancing” arrangements can happen before or when communities reach a tipping point and get angry. Early and constructive negotiations with communities and neighborhoods around hotspots can be developed when there is good leadership from public, private, and civic sector representatives empowered to analyze options and construct solutions.

However, there is a fine old proverb that says, “Never test the depth of the stream with both feet.” The right kind of initial working group to design approaches could potentially create the model and pave the way for pilot projects through four specific products:

• A set of agreed upon principles for the practical management of future encounters between communities, industry, hospitality unions, and government when over-tourism is at issue;
• a procedural template with a set of corresponding best practices that negotiators can use to set up and help guide consultations;
• a checklist for leaders in all four sectors on how to prepare for organized discussions, productively talk with respect and integrity around stubborn issues, and produce actual performance results; and
• a roadmap for creating an actual test in a community or neighborhood.

Productive discussions of this sort require legitimacy and credibility. If there is a will to do so by HTA and its future subcontractors, a working group made up of community, government, industry, and hospitality union representatives can be assembled to review community hot spots, explore the ideas, identify drivers and constraints, and report back to HTA, the Legislature, and all others interested in taming the problem of over-tourism and community impacts and benefits.

“The way out,” said Robert Frost, “is always through.”