House Standing Committee on Tourism

Convening this morning's he joint hearing for the committee on tourism and the committee on economic development technology. Joined next to me is Chair Iligan. Date is 03/17/2026 at the 10AM agenda here in Conference Room 423 for the purposes of hearing two Senate bills. In order to allow as many people to testify as possible, there will be a there won't be a time limit. That's not gonna be a time limit.

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First bill is the joint bill. We have SB 2,577, related to sports tourism. It requires the Department of Business, Economic Development, and Tourism to conduct a study of the potential economic benefits and cost of sports tourism in the state. Requires certain funds appropriated to the Hawaii tourism authority to be used to study the potential benefits of sports tourism, requires a report to the legislature, requires that a specified sum appropriated to the Hawaii tourism authority in the supplemental executive budget be expanded by the DBEDT for by DBEDT for the study, effective 07/01/2015. First up, we have the Hawaii tourism authority in support.

Thank you. That is all that we have signed up to testify on this measure before us. Is there any one person that wishes to testify on this bill? Go ahead. Please state your name and your position on the bill.

Good morning. Happy Saint Patrick's Day. I get somewhere in green so I don't get pinched. I'm sure all my colleagues will. But for the record, my name is Russell Homa, APEC Hawaii, author of the blueprint.

I know I've been testifying these past few years. I can recall that sports tourism is very important to our state of Hawaii economy because we all are sports fan here and we wanna enjoy our children to play, be active in sports. So there's a lot of useful sports program here that can benefit with the sports tourism. We can bring professional athlete, we can bring trainers, coaches. So in my case, I remember like in 2018 when we were getting get ready for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and we were recalling that Hawaii will be a ideal location for have professional athletes, Olympic trainers, Olympic professional athletes to come to Hawaii and train for these sporting events even with the Asian games.

We can bring a lot of these professional teams from Asia to host some kind of professional events here and that's part of the sports tourism. And I can recall that there was a for the for your information in 2018, I helped draft Senate Concurrent Resolution number 147 and Senate Resolution 93, which was a resolution that calls for sports tourism that we wanted to advertise and have the Hawaii Tourism Authority hopefully send a letter to the US Olympic Committee and all the necessary agencies that's going to be involved. And that was so you know what we did that we sent the resolution anyway and I did it personally and we're able to bring the US Olympic swim swimming team to come to Hawaii and train before they take the trip to Tokyo, Japan. So they use the Swimming Pool, they use the Punahou Swimming Pool. So the other athletes are all kind of ready to go take that trip to Tokyo to participate in the Olympic and and the result was, you know, magnificent.

They brought many gold medals back, so I think Hawaii has that good aloha kind of spirit to promote that kind of tourism. It's gonna benefit everybody including the future generation and the young keikis here and I'll be more than happy to answer any question. Thank you for giving the opportunity to testify today.

Thank you. Is there anyone else wishing to testify in the measure before us? Anyone on Zoom? Okay. I want to note that we've received supportive testimony from Retail Merchants of Hawaii, Maui Chamber of Commerce, and Hawaii Biscuit and Lee, as well as two other individuals all in support. Members, any questions? I

have a question.

Oh, yes. For HTA. Vice president. Vice chair.

Thank you for being here today. I just kinda Wanna Piggy off back what mister Hondo was saying. Does the state have any affiliations with, the Olympics and, any partnerships while they're transitioning to LA?

Currently, we we do not have any partnerships, and we're always looking to see what teams that we can partner with, especially with Olympics coming up and see how, Hawaii can be, like, a training ground for for teams. Yeah.

Okay. So, HTA is open or is already in contact, or what is the status right now of that?

Yeah. So we're we're looking at, partnerships right now with teams. Yeah. Our sports manager is, how should I say it is looking at those possibilities. Okay.

Thank you. Thanks. Thank you, chair. Thank you.

Members, any other questions? Seeing none, we're gonna move on to our next item on the agenda, Senate Bill 83 relating to hotels. It requires hotel keepers to provide adequate notice of service disruptions to third party vendors and prospective and current guests under certain conditions. It prohibits hotel holders keepers from imposing any fee penalty or other charge and from retaining any deposit of a guest who cancels a reservation if the service instruction is likely to exist during the period of this of the reservation. Requires any hotel keeper that violates or causes another person to violate this active forfeit the injured injured party three times the amount of the sum charge in excess of what the hotel keeper is entitled to.

Effective, 07/01/2050. First up, we have Local five.

Aloha, chairs and vice chair, members of committee. My name is Ben Sadowski. I'm with ... Local five. First of all, I just wanted to thank you for bringing this bill back up. It's something we really appreciate.

And, you know, we submitted late testimony, but I'll just summarize briefly. We are in strong support of SB 83. We believe that, you know, this is something that's in the best interest of visitors because they wanna be informed about, you know, what's going on before they get to Hawaii. Before they come into their hotels, they may have some kind of disruption there. We feel like it's good for employees because, you know, workers it's it's difficult for workers at the front desk or wherever to have to deal with guests who are, you know, sort of blindsided if if they aren't aware of what's what's going on at the hotel, whether it be construction, whether it be a strike or, you know, other issues like bed bugs, things like that.

And so we also think it's good for the industry in general. You know, in we've we've seen instances where hotels have not notified their guests about labor disputes and other things beforehand. And and guests who are upset about that. And we think it would be much better for guests to be informed. And, yeah.

I mean, it just it it says a lot more for, the strength of the industry and for, really, the Aloha Spirit to be able to, to let guests know these things beforehand. And, for them to come in fully informed and for them to feel like we're being on the level with them all the time. So for those reasons, we appreciate it very much. We support this bill. And, you know, we would ask that if you if you intend to make any amendments that please, you know, we're we're most interested in wanting to make sure that there are significant enough disincentives for not informing guests so that the hotels will not do that and that the guests have the ability to cancel or, you know, even a private right of action if that's possible. So thank you. Thank you.

That is all that we have signed up to testify in you want it? Yeah. Okay. From Local five.

I'm Jolie Tokusato. I'm with Unite here Local five, but I want to give my own opinion on this bill. I really appreciate this bill. I can give three perspectives. I was a front desk clerk, and whenever there was something big going on at the hotel, like a construction, major construction, or even, you know, if the serve the elevators were down, something like that.

You know, there our buildings was folds and whatever it was, if any of those things happen as a front desk clerk, I'd be like, oh my god, you know? Please please don't get angry when they check-in. You know, they'll come in and they'll say, oh, why didn't you folks tell us that there's major construction going on? And can you move us? Or, you know, that type of so we'd be really afraid as a worker, as employees to we'd be, like, squeezing our old call and going, no.

Please, please, please don't get mad. And then, as far as the the union, I was on the strike line, and people did appreciate whenever we told them to say, hey. You know, were you aware that there was a strike going on? Because we were we've been here on the line for forty days. And they're like, no.

And and they were angry, but if when we reached out to them, they were you would think that they would be angry at us for being on strike, but they are more appreciative that we said something to them, that we reached out to tell them that this is what you can do next time, you know, to ask for whatever. But it's better if the hotels let them know in advance. My other perspective is, you know, I'm a working class person. I have to save a lot of money to go on vacation or go anywhere. And anytime I travel, you know, it's for a special occasion for a wedding, sometimes, you know, a birthday, if somebody's big birthday, whatever.

And I if if, you know, if something was like that was going on, and it's something that I, you know, saved a lot of money to go and travel so far for, I'd be really, really upset, you know, that it it disrupted my vacation. So, you know, as a as a, as a, what is it, as a guest, I'd be upset too. So there's really a lot of things that, this bill would kind of address, and it's a good bill. So we'd love to see those, amendments that Ben spoke of, and thank you so much.

Thank you. That is all that we have signed up to testify in person. Is there anyone else wishing to testify in person? Anyone else on anyone on Zoom wishing to testify on this s b 83? The chair wants to note that we have received supportive testimony from Kauai State AFL CIO and ILW International Hawaii.

We received opposition testimony from Kohala Coast Resort Association and Hawaii Hotel Logging Association. Members, any questions? Seeing none, we are going to take a short recess. Reconvening this morning's joint hearing on the Committee on Tourism and the Committee on Economic Development and Technology for the purposes of, hearing bills and making a decision on them. Date is March 17, 10AM agenda here in Conference Room 423.

First up, we have Senate Bill 2,577 relating to sports tourism. Chair's recommendation is that we pass this out as an HD one. We are going to amend item two to read that it will identify all sporting events, so it's not just small ones. We are going to amend item number four to add any other existing large scale sporting facilities to that, so it doesn't look like just the Aloha Stadium development. It can also look at the soccer complex or the the SoFi Arena.

We're gonna also add item eight to this so that we can have the site identify any drawbacks such as time zones and ways to address them. And then we're finally gonna add another item to study, which is to look at how Hawaii can play in it as a role for a training grounds for large scale tournaments that are outside of the state like the Olympics. Tech amendments for consistency, style, and clarity. Members, any comments or questions? Seeing none, vice chair for the vote.

Representative Gedeon?

Representative Yamashita?

Aye.

Aye.

Okay. We're voting on SB 2577SD2. Recommendation is to pass with amendments. Chair and vice chair vote aye. Representative Hussey is excused. Representative Ilagan?

Aye.

Chair, your recommendation is adopted.

On the committee on ECD, same recommendation. Members, any question? Vice Chair Templo, would you please take the vote?

Chair, your recommendation is adopted.

Aye.

Rep Gedeon?

Aye.

Aye.

Rep Tam vote aye. Rep Yamashita?

Yes. Okay. Voting on s b 2577 sd2 with amendments. Chair, Iligan vote aye. Rep Tam?

Thank you.

Okay. Next up, we have Senate Bill 83 relating to hotels. I have Chair has looked at the testimony in both supporting opposition, and I think that we have tried to find a way to address some of the concerns. Chair does wanna put in a committee report that the next committee should know what happens when a hotel is one hotel is on strike and another hotel isn't on strike, but they're in the same vicinity of each other, and the noise travels to the other hotel. What happens to that hotel even though they are not on strike?

So that's gonna be in the committee report for the next committee to address. But we're gonna amend the language deleting we're gonna amend the bill deleting language allowing guests to cancel a reservation or terminate the remaining period of the reservation due to a service disruption without penalty. We're gonna delete language requiring hotel keepers that that commit a violation to forfeit the injured party an amount of three times the amount charged in excess of what the hotel keeper is entitled to. We're gonna amend the definition of service interruption to remove references to construction work or the unability unavailability of certain amenities or services, and we're gonna just limit it to striking. And we're going to pass it with tech amendments for style, consistency, and clarity.

Members, any comments or questions? Okay. Seeing none, Vice Chair for the vote.

[Roll call]

Thank you.

This hearing is now adjourned.