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If the Hawaii Tourism Authority is eliminated, what should replace it?

The two main contenders at the Hawaii Legislature are currently 1) , which converts the HTA into a “Destination Management Agency” headed by three Commissioners; and 2) , which instead creates a new division within the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism.

These bills are joined by a more limited third proposal, , which reestablishes a “Tourism Liaison Officer” in the governor’s office.

We believe Hawaii should first carefully study what tourism destination management approaches have worked elsewhere and solicit substantial public review. However, it appears the Legislature wants to act quickly.

As many ideas in these three bills are new and have received limited public feedback, we offer some suggestions intended to:

• increase opportunities for community input;
• assure “destination management” activities are coordinated with promotion in a balanced way, including better communication among all public agencies;
• ensure that new approaches will not become “political footballs”; and
• lead to needed long-range assessments of ways to keep improving tourism governance models and assure we better understand and balance tourism costs vs. benefits.

We’ll discuss each bill separately, accepting its basic idea but suggesting adjustments.

First, we believe HB 1375’s three paid full-time DMA Commissioners — to be appointed by the governor without Senate approval — should each be mandated to come from a distinct group of stakeholders with little overlap (e.g., industry/labor, public agencies associated with tourism management, and culture/environment/community).

Otherwise, initial political appointees may be sterling, but quality could deteriorate over time if these positions become patronage jobs for political supporters or cushy positions for senior officials to ease their way into retirement.

Given their substantial salaries, commissioners should have clearly specified functions other than appointing an executive director to oversee regular DMA administration. One possibility is for the commissioners to be the DMA’s “eyes and ears,” reaching out to community and industry stakeholders to identify near-term emerging issues and possible solutions — e.g., “hot-spot” community impacts, sudden market challenges, and labor disruptions.

If this is done, such initial outreach discussions should be exempt from Sunshine Law requirements restricting communication between commissioners outside formal meetings. However, all actual decisions and recommendations should still be made be during public meetings under that law.

DMA commissioners should also be tasked with identifying long-term threats and opportunities requiring study and action — e.g., cumulative climate change adaptation tourism needs; cost-benefit analyses that incorporate indirect environmental and socio-cultural issues; under-tapped and desirable market segments; and of course, monitoring what other places have done to address “over-tourism” without crippling the economy.

Finally, HB 1375 now copies much of the current legal language for HTA, which is heavy on what the agency “may” do but light on what it “shall” do. We suggest adding a “shall” provision that clearly mandates attention to destination management activities and requires explicit coordinating mechanisms with other public and private agencies.

Next, SB 1522 — creating an “Office of Tourism and Destination Management” in DBEDT — also would benefit from a similar “shall” provision to assure explicit focus on destination management, so the idea is more than just a name change.

Putting OTDM entirely within a regular state department can make it harder to effectively coordinate with other agencies. The bill says OTDM “may” establish an advisory board consisting of heads of various tourism-related state agencies.

We suggest this be another “shall” (extending to county offices), and that a separate method be created to assure the office has regular input from industry and community stakeholders.

OTDM would have three separate branches: a) Convention Center operations, b) tourism and marketing, and c) destination management (which is currently undefined in the bill). Marketing and destination management are inter-related and should not be in separate silos, because destination management includes the way Hawaii is marketed and how visitors are asked to behave.

Finally, HB 1239, which brings back the governor’s Tourism Liaison from the Lingle administration, would benefit from adding support staff. HB 1239 gives the Tourism Liaison a clear set of duties. However, these are high-level and insufficient if HTA is eliminated without replacement and if the liaison lacks staff to do her job.

As a final consideration, none of these bills explicitly requires or encourages more community-based tourism. This could better balance tourism benefits and costs at selected local levels and should be given careful consideration as additions to these bills.

Furthermore, some form of “destination stewardship council,” along the lines of a successful model in Barcelona, would be an effective way to identify problems and incorporate resident feedback.

Effective management requires more than a change of name and new org charts. If the HTA is replaced, the new model of tourism governance should be carefully considered to deliver the results that balance our quality of life with the state’s most important industry.