Hawai`i Tourism Plan must involve the public
not just industry executives

Ira Rohter
Charles Ice

6/1/99

 

the shibai survey.  Last month a number of environmental and community groups received a request from the Hawai`i Tourism Authority to help them mail out a survey they were conduced.  HTA said the survey was to gather "input" from "the public" about such questions as "potential marketing and product development strategies for achieving tourism growth" and "eliminating barriers to achieving tourism growth."  

Many of us wondered "what is going on here?"  The survey seemed biased in a highly pro-growth, promoting Waikiki-style tourism direction.  When we examined more carefully "Who" comprised the HTA Board, many of us refused to fill out the questionnaire, as we concluded our answers would be mostly ignored, or mis-interpreted.  [HTA recently told the Legislature it had already completed its research on most issues.]

Several organization leaders suggested to HTA staffers that the planning process should be opened to include a wider range of community people, who could engage in a meaningful dialog about the future of tourism.  HTA ignored these suggestions.   Given Hawai`i's current economic doldrums, the future course of Hawaii's No. 1 economic engine — tourism — is of vital importance to every citizen in the state. 

the Hawai`i Tourism Authority.  In 1998 the Legislature created the Hawai`i Tourism Authority, as recommended by Governor Cayetano's Economic Revitalization Task Force.  The 13 appointed members have extraordinay powers:

       * to create and direct Hawai`i's tourism policy;

       * to identity State departments and agencies and specify "programs of actions for these departments" to follow; and

       * to spend, without direct Legislature budgeting, about $60 million a year of automatically funded State tax revenues on their favored projects.

In reality, the HTA is an exclusive club of mostly mass tourism executives and marketers, who prefer to operate behind closed doors.  [And tried to get legislation to keep its reports and analyses and decision-making even more secret.]   The Board is dominated by executives from three major hotels and resorts (Outrigger, Starwood, Castle Group), two global airlines (Japan Airlines and Continental), and two marketing and retailing companies (Cove Marketing, Duty Free Shoppers).  The "general public" is supposedly represented by someone none of us know, who is politically well-connected, and the papers describe as an "independent consultant for events and public relations."  She cannot vote.

 who really benefits?   Our coalitions have no confidence in HTA's strategic planning effort as presently constituted.  No people other than Big Tourism boosters had any role in designing the questionnaire, will analyze and summarize the results, or will consider these "inputs" in the final plan.  We see that HTA's ideas will mostly benefit large offshore-owned corporations, and will not support locally-owned small businesses.  The industry's major players seem predetermined to continue more of the same marketing strategies and "product development" they've followed for years.   And had they even got a bill through the Legislature that allowed their reports and discussions to be further hidden from legitimate public scrutiny. [Fortunately the Governor just vetoed HB 221 after widespread community opposition to its secrecy sections.]

We see little evidence that HTA's executives are open to idea that heritage corridors and plantation museums, eco-tourism, small-scale bed & breakfasts and community-owned facilities, enhancing our natural resources, etc. should be a major emphasis of tourism today.  HTA seems to be ignoring the recommendations given them by UH's School of Travel Industry Management and most worldclass advisors.  ["Development Strategies For The New Tourism Environment." November, 1998]  TIM and most consultants have repeatedly told them that the market has significantly changed, and that Hawai`i's unique niche is to attract travelers who prefer leisure experiences more connected to Hawai`i's natural environment and diverse cultures, rather than Waikiki's out-of-fashion massive, crowded facilities. 

alternative ideas and process

It is vital to create a "Tourism Strategic Plan" that benefits everyone in Hawai`i, and it needs to be constituted by a different process.

Recently two widely based networks — the HawaiianEnvironmental Coalition and the Community Revitalization Coalition — asked HTA to give members of the general public a more meaningful role in crafting the state's Strategic Plan for Tourism.  Specically they requested that the HTA committee now preparing the Plan:

* Be broadened by the addition of an equal number of community members and leaders representing a variety of viewpoints — Native Hawaiian cultural practitioners, small business people, eco-tourism advocates, environmentalists, etc.

* Conduct discussion groups in the community at large on all islands.

The Community Revitalization Coalition (CRC) agreed to facilitate such a process.  The CRC group began to explore the meaning of revitalizing Hawai`i's economy, including tourism, in its "Community Speaks" program last year. 

The Hawai`i Tourism Authority planning process must be opened up to public involvement, otherwise its plans will be out-of-date with modern ideas.  As Chuck Gee, Dean of UH's School of Travel Industry Management, said recently:

"The fundamental problem with Hawai`i's tourism industry is that it has reached maturity and actions need to be taken to counter the decline. . . . Tourism should be viewed as a means to empower other industries rather than as an industry on which Hawai`i is overly dependent. . . . "

"Developing different tourism products such as eco-tourism, sports tourism, health tourism and agritourism would in turn help develop other economic sectors and specialized niches to attract visitors.  The success of tourism in the future will also depend on collective involvement of both the community and the industry . . ."

Hawai`i's economy cannot be left in the hands of a small exclusive group of tourism executives.    Unless the plan's design is open to meaningful public participation, the HTA Plan will be considered illegitimate by many citizens, and its proposals — along with HTA itself —  bitterly contested in the political area. 

 

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Ira Rohter is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Hawai`i — Manoa, and author of A Green Hawai`i: Sourcebook for Development Alternatives.   Charles Ice is a community planner, and a coordinator of the Community Revitalization Coalition.