Mufi's Message - July 19

Civil Beat Editorial Board Interview

The photo above was taken during an interview with Civil Beat's editorial board. Photo courtesy of Civil Beat and Cory Lum.

​Aloha,

Last week, I was invited to sit down with Civil Beat's editorial board for a wide-ranging interview that covered everything from the legislative battle of House Bill 862 to the history of our association and even the status of the Honolulu rail project. I was given the opportunity to speak at length about many of the issues facing our industry and our community, and I was extremely pleased to see that they published my remarks nearly in their entirety.

I encourage you to read through the whole piece as it summarizes important talking points that can be utilized by industry stakeholders and professionals as we continue to combat criticism of the industry and work to better educate the public on tourism's importance. As the article is extremely long, I have reproduced two key sections below. ​

HB 862 Veto

CB: OK, so this is a pretty big hui that you’ve got together here. But still, you guys were unsuccessful in defeating House Bill 862 in changing the funding of the Hawaii Tourism Authority and the hotel tax for the counties. You convinced the governor and he vetoed it, but the House and Senate narrowly overrode the governor.

MH: Let me look at just the cup being half full. We came within one vote in the Senate of getting our way because I quickly saw that we didn’t need both houses. The other side needed both houses to get the two-thirds majority. All I needed was to get one-third in one chamber, and I very clearly said at the beginning, it’s the Senate, not the House — the House leadership has really come down hard. They were really pushing this thing. I thought the opportunity, as I said, came within one vote. We got eight senators.
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And I look forward now to the challenge we have on addressing the management of tourism and how we can work together to achieve that end. That’s what everyone wants to see. Less emphasis on marketing, more emphasis on management. I think it behooves us to work together because, until the state finds another alternative to tourism, it’s going to be tourism from our standpoint, as long as we’re the biggest game in town.

Overtourism

CB: Tourism, while it was always sort of a pain point before, seems to have emerged from the pandemic as being a real fight now. A lot more people are just fed up with over-tourism. What do you do about that as the tourism industry? Is there anything you can do to help people feel better about tourists?

MH: So I want to say for the record some things that occurred that I think are not given a full understanding of what that was all about. The industry particularly is being faulted for not doing enough to anticipate tourists coming back to Hawaii, and they should have been doing that. But during the pandemic year, we were working side by side with state government to basically put forward the Safe Travels program, which has proven to be successful. It was very uncomfortable for us. We’re so used to asking visitors to come and all of a sudden we’re telling them “time out, now is not the time to come.”
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So now we’re at this stage where, all through that period, HTA was not able to shine the light enough, I believe, in their Destination Management Action Plan program that they had put in place, which consists of four counties getting together with 20 or so stakeholders, kind of laying out the plans to how to make this place a better place — not just for visitors, but for residents, touching on cultural areas, natural resources, environment and so forth. And now we have to fast-forward and put that into action sooner rather than later, because the thought is that we didn’t do enough during that period.

So I’ve always maintained the two things that should have been done. In the mid-’90s I championed the bill at Hanauma Bay to create a user fee there that has to go into a special fund. And I’ve got no problem charging tourists to use the beach. But let’s make sure that local residents are not charged because charging someone to use a beach in a way is anathema. That should have been commonplace throughout the state, so now we’re playing catch-up. But it has to go back to the ongoing preservation or maintenance of that road or that trail or that bay.

The second thing that we’ve been saying for a while is they’ve got to rein in illegal short-term rentals. The number really hasn’t changed in 20 years. It’s been 45,000 to 50,000 hotel rooms.  What has grown is the vacation rental side. We’re still bringing in 6 to 7 million visitors based on 40,000 to 50,000 rooms. That has grown. So and I’ve always said this, I’m OK with short-term rentals operating in resort areas. Let them compete with us, because that’s what they’re fashioning themselves as, an alternative source of accommodations.
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​So those are the two areas that we’re ready to roll up our sleeves and work with government, state and county and the local community. I really believe we can have some instantaneous results that could help not all of the issues that people have with us, but demonstrate, hey, we’re on your side. We want to rein in our vacation rentals. We want to see more impact user fees.

These are just two critical, industry-related topics that were covered in a nearly two-hour interview. In the time since the article was posted, I've received numerous positive comments from industry members who were pleased to see our side of the story so clearly articulated to the masses. I've long held that we can't run from the tough conversations about tourism and its place in our society and our economy. This is the type of media exposure I feel strongly that we need to seize upon, and I was grateful for the discussion.

Mahalo, 
​Mufi