House Standing Committee on Tourism

Convening this morning's joint hearing for the committee on custom media and tourism and the Senate Committee on Economic Development and tourism for the purposes of reviewing the, for reviewing HCA's contract on both current projects and updates. We are in Conference Room 411 at the Hawaii State Capitol. Time is 10AM, October 14. Joining me online is Chair, Du Quait. And in person, we have Senator Fukunaga and representative Gideon.

Senator McCoy, do you want to make any remarks right now?

Or...

Okay. We will begin. Miss Anderson, would you like to prepare, start your presentation? Sure.

Okay. Aloha, Chair Tam, Chair DeCoite, Santo Fukunaga, and Brett Gideon. I'm Caroline Anderson, interim president and CEO. I have with me today our chief administrative officer, David Uchiyama, our new chief grant officer, Mitsy Yonizawa. I also have with us today our VP of finance, Talon Kishi, our public affairs officer, PAO.

Yes. Jill Radke, and our destination... Sorry. Our brand manager for sports, Milton Lafitaba. Thank you for calling this info briefing.

We are pleased to share with you what we've been doing so far and the areas that you asked us to present on. Our... We have been working very closely with our advisory board. They have been working diligently on the CEO search, which David will provide you an update on. They have helped us, guided us on our strategic plan, on the destination management action plans, in reviewing our RFPs for the marketing, major market areas, and also, helped us to review those RFPs as well.

Each day has been getting our house in order. We are working very well with the the director. We have weekly meetings with him. Our invoices are paid on time, and we're working as a team to execute our strategic plan, our destination management action plans, and our budget for fiscal year twenty twenty seven. So with that, I'm just gonna, share my screen to present to you.

Do you ever see this? So we'll start with our current projects that you've asked us, for status update on. We'll talk about our strategic plan, air route developments, brand marketing overview, and sports tourism. So this year, our board, as well as the DBEDT director and governor, approved our 2030 strategic plan.

Our vision is, you can see right here, Hawaii thrives through collective actions to grow economic vitality, strengthen collaborations, and fulfill our shared Kuleana to build a visitor economy where our people, place, and culture prosper together, guided by Ho'okipa, Malama Aina, and Aloha.

Our strap plan, has four key performance indicators, that I'm sharing with you, on the screen. They are resident sentiment, visitor satisfaction, visitor spending and average daily spend. And we track this through our resident sentiment survey with the help of DBEDT's, tourism research branch, and their consultant or contractor omnitrack. Their latest study was presented at our twenty twenty six tourism conference just the other week.

And one of the key questions that we are tracking is tourism has brought more benefits than problems and seeing how that has moved over time.

And I'll get into that a little bit more in the presentation. We also look at visitor satisfaction with the help of our tourism research branch, and we track this on a quarterly basis. Visitor spending is provided to us on a monthly basis, And this is just the annual. You can see for the past three years, it has been... For the last year, it's been growing.

And so that's total spending. And then lastly, average daily spend increased roughly 7% over the previous year. So with the activities and programs that we implement, we're continuing to push the needle forward. Our strat plan is comprised of three pillars. They are brand marketing, experience development, and tourism leadership.

In our plan, we say we're getting back to basics, and we know that through... These three pillars will help us to strengthen our competitiveness, help us with collaboration. We need collaboration to execute on these three pillars. And lastly, ensuring that tourism creates greater value for our residents, our our communities, as well as for, the businesses and our visitor industry and providing for a great experience for our visitors. So each pillar has strategies, its own key performance indicators, and other measures.

I'm not gonna go over every single strategy, but for the brand marketing pillar, we have five overall strategies and in... Which are... Just basically cover it. Target... We're targeting high value visitors.

We wanna energize the Hawaii brand, boost global competitiveness with our MCI markets as well as our leisure markets, optimize a good... Optimize the visitor marketing mix to bring to bring economic benefits for the communities, and lastly, promote responsible travel. In our strategic plan, we have implement... Implementation timeline. I should have mentioned that this is a five year strategic plan.

I know you can't read this, but I just wanted to share out with you that we are... We have outlined

for the

next five years the different strategies and activities that we wanna, work on, and we need the budget to do so. So this year, for fiscal year twenty seven, what we are working on is, one of the major things is that all of our major market area contracts, so that's the contracts with North America, Japan, Korea, etcetera, we just finished, the RFP for that. Some we have contracts for, some we're still in procurement. But, basically, all of these contracts will have a fresh start in... On 01/01/2027.

We are also, executing on a marketing effectiveness campaign, looking at the return on advertising spend and return on investment in the North America and Japan markets. Other initiatives we have in this area are the enhancement of the Go Hawaii app as well as the Go Hawaii website. We're seeing how we can create efficiencies and overall what we're doing in the brand marketing area, and Mitzi will speak more to that later on today.

And lastly, we are conducting our market study, looking at the markets of Korea and The Philippines. And I know there's one more major market area, and I can't think of it right now, but there's three markets that we're looking at.

Our next pillar is our experience development pillar. And this is really important for us because, you know, we wanna make sure that the visitor has a great experience when they come here. So that... What that means is creating experiences for them and also making sure that, you know, when they're here that they are traveling respectfully, responsibly throughout the the state as well as addressing destination management, issues. So all of those types of, activities fall under the death...

The experience development pillar. There are seven strategies in this area. And to briefly cover them, establishing... What we'd like to do is establish an HTA experience development program. And this program we're looking at, executing in fiscal year twenty eight.

We wanna... Like I mentioned, enhancing our major attractions and experiences, strengthening the Hawaii Convention Center as the economic and cultural hub, supporting local entrepreneurship and creators, preserving and advancing the Hawaiian culture, making sure that we are using data to address hot spot mitigation, and lastly, supporting Hawaii sustainability goals. And you can see here also we have, three key performance indicators as well as other measures to measure the success of our activities.

Major initiatives in this area, again, we have a timeline, we have it throughout the next five years, but major initiatives that we're taking on in this, fiscal year twenty twenty seven It are the implementation of each island's destination management action plan. We're also looking at, revamping or enhancing our visitor education and post arrival marketing program.

We are also executing on our community enrichment programs and signature events and sports, making sure that what's happening right now is we are, also executing on our community tourism collaboratives and foundational technical assistance programs. And lastly, another major initiative is our airport greeting programs. Our last pillar is tourism leadership, and there are eight, I'm sorry, six, strategies under this area.

One of the most important things that we wanna, make sure that we are fulfilling is strengthening our role as, a leader of tourism for the industry and for the community. We'd like to formalize interagency partnerships because we know that we cannot do a lot of many things alone.

We would like to strengthen our island based collaboration, communicate collaborative and proactively to the community, to industry, to visitors, support workforce development, and lastly, build long term resilience of the tourism economy. Again, we have key performance indicators for each, for this pillar and, other measures as well to track our performance. And major initiatives in this area include air route development. We are creating MOUs with the counties and other state agencies, especially to move our destination management action plans forward. We are updating our workforce development plan.

We are partnering with the Tim School again with Ho'olina, scholarships. We're looking at, providing five scholarships to, public school, seniors who wanna have a career in the visitor industry. We are working on executing a program, like a Hawaii Harabedian cultural training program with Kapiolani Community College. And lastly, under this area is where we, have our program evaluations, such as the, program evaluation for our festivals and events. So in a nutshell, that is our strategic plan.

And with that, I will turn it over to David, to talk about air routes developments. Or I don't know. Do you want to do q and a now?

Yeah. Let's... This is a really long presentation, so I kind of want to break it into, like, bits and pieces so we can do some q and a

Sure.

If that's possible. I'll start with other members in the committee if they have any questions about the

brief overview of the strategic plan. I don't have any just one minute.

Okay. I have some, I want to talk about the, the survey response of visitors. What is the response rate when talking about, when, for visitors that are coming in? I know that that's optional when, when people are filling out the ags. What is the response rate?

Yeah.

You know, that information is collected by Jennifer Churn at the tourism research branch. So in regards to the response rate... Sorry. I don't know it offhand if... I think I might have the number in my notes.

Would you like me to get it all?

Oh, no. I I Aye... That's okay. I I guess my quest... Other question is, are we doing anything to make sure that we increase the visitor response rate?

Because I just understand that we should have, you know, as good as data as possible, and it's only possible when

we have Yep.

Strong response rates.

I know when we were doing the paper surveys, our response rate was above 90% per Jennifer. Now that it's online, I know that has gone down, but the team is Jennifer Chun, the department of transportation, and the contractor working hard to make sure that the response rate is increased. So, you know, if you recall, like, when you fly from the Mainland back home, you have... It's optional. We're trying to make sure that people do fill it out.

So they're doing what they can to the necessary steps so that people do fill it out.

Okay. Aye... My next question is about residential sentiment. It says here that it's in the positive of, like, quarter two of twenty twenty five is 58%. Quarter two of twenty twenty six, it dropped to 52%.

This is based on slide four.

Alright. Read it all.

Do you know in those surveyed by your recollection of, like, why people are having a more positive view on tourism?

Sorry. The resident sentiment Yeah. Survey? Yeah. Yeah.

So so, actually, for the resident sentiment survey, yeah, this question is about tourism has brought more benefits than problems. So, actually, in 2026, there was a slight decline in that. Yeah. But, you know, overall, what we see is, you know, right now, residents, you know, if my slides later on in the presentation, you'll see that visitor arrivals are increasing. Right?

And so, I think that the community does feel that impact when there are more, visitors on island. So what we're trying to do is make sure that there's that balance, especially through destination management actions that we can make sure that those areas where, you know, there may be overcrowding, that visitors are spread out throughout the island. Like, it's not just centralized and perhaps one popular area.

So you... So the reason why it's gone down is because there are visitors in these destination hotspots.

No. Sorry. That's not it. Sorry. That's just one example.

But, basically, what we're seeing is that... Yeah. Do the... Or can I jump to that slide?

Yeah. Sure.

Goodbye. Okay. So in this slide, if you can see it, it tracks all the way back to 1988. And the bars are the presidents who strongly agree, somewhat agree that tourism has brought more benefits and problems. And you can see in and the the line graph, the line is the, visitor arrivals.

And so, you know, and in 2020, that was the the... Was when COVID hit. So over time, back in the eighties, right, it was in the '70, the seventies, at the highest in 2010, it was eighty percent. The tourism brought more benefits and problems. And over time it has declined, but it also has to do with, you know, when there is, when there are more visitors, right?

People that are residents, you know, times are... Right now, what we... We're seeing here is that our... The residents don't necessarily, you know, see... I'm sorry.

I'm trying to collect my thoughts. Over... Overall, this... You know, it's been basically steady in the in the 50% percentage range. The decrease, from 58% to 30...

To 53%, it's not statistically significant regard... Regarding that decline. It's... It is a decline, but it's it's something that we're watching. And we know that when residents see that destination management is being acted upon, then they are more likely to think better of tourism.

And so that's let me see. And the neck... This next slide, we ask what are the problems caused or created by tourism. And this is the first time ever that you can see here that residents said that visitors say... Sorry, that the residents are saying that visitors do not respect culture, traditions, and.

And so what we're doing is, as I mentioned, through our visitor education and post arrival marketing as well as with our marketing in general, we wanna push out the messaging to visitors on how to be respectful when they're coming to Hawaii and when traveling around the islands. You can also see here with overcrowding, overuse, as well as traffic problems.

There was a decrease in in the percentage from the previous year so that one can also allude or think that, you know, we are, through our destination management action, screening visitors throughout the island so that they're not concentrated in one or more of the areas that are that have too many visitors.

Okay. I have a question.

You know, in a way, it's it's hard to really measure sentiment at this point because I think Hawaii generally is experiencing economic downturns. And so, you know, the overriding concern at the community level is while, you know, sentiment regarding visitors may be somewhat stable, I think the greater concern within the community is they can sort of see the the news coverage saying that, you know, people are coming, but they're staying for shorter periods of time.

There's less likelihood that they're gonna be patronizing local stores, restaurants, etcetera. And it seems as though, you know, many, locations are also undergoing severe stresses, you know, just to stay open. So it's sort of a broader mix in a way.

It's not so much, solely based upon the experience of, you know, visitors in a location, but I think the general climate is very uncertain. So in many respects, you know, it's how do we then embrace a broad based economic stabilization effort because the visitor component is part of that. But, you know, without creating more economic stability within the overall economy, it's hard to have positive visitor experiences when you have restaurants closing or other kinds of experiences, you know, going through a downturn.

And and that's the scary part, I think, at this point because we don't control fuel prices, and that's the part that is so scary. Yes.

Thank you.

I kinda wanna piggyback on that. Do you think some of the drivers into, premium or I think... Do you think that it's possible that some, a factor that's driving, positive residential sentiment to tourism is growing anxiety that the industry is not doing well right now due to these factors?

Sorry. Can can you repeat that one

more time?

Do you think that a big driver into why there is a positive over 50% as I mean, like, view towards tourism is because of growing anxiety that the industry is not doing well. Because as Senator mentioned, you know, they're seeing less and less. Visitors visitors are staying, shorter amount of nights and restaurants are closing.

I mean, that that could be one reason. But, usually, when... You you can see arrivals have been on the uptick. Right? And so then there's...

Sometimes it's... There's a correlation between when there's more arrivals and sentiment is down. Yeah. So that... That's kind of what you're...

Sorry. I didn't explain that well in what I said earlier, but that's what you see right now with the twenty twenty six numbers. Overall, the good thing is that more than half of this... More than half of our residents believe tourism brings, you know, benefits and problems. And when you compare it with other, destinations, we do rank...

We score higher than others. So that's a positive thing too.

Any other questions?

Any questions online?

Any questions online?

I'm seeing none. I guess we can continue with our presentation.

Okay. I'm gonna ask David to come up.

Good morning. And hitting on your energy or fuel price, that's exactly where we're gonna go because you're absolutely right. At the beginning of the year, West Texas crude was at about $45 a barrel. Today, it's at 95. And the other markets are above 100.

And with what's happened in The Gulf with shutting all those oil rigs down, I think we're gonna see an additional effect with that shutdown. But fuel prices for the airlines have climbed dramatically, and they've not been able to keep up with the airfares to cover their operational costs. Part of this is due to Hawaii being a leisure market versus a business market. And business travel tends to pay more.

Leisure travel is more competitive because it's coming out of the consumer's pocket versus being paid for by the business.

I I tied... I went to a contractor that we used to use, Avalon Pacific, and just wanted to give you some history on what we had in the past. Of course, we had China service. Unfortunately, air slots have been limited. Hopefully, with the discussions that have taken place with the two presidents might open that up.

An opportunity that we see is for Taiwan service, and I'll touch on that a little bit more. Also, out of Australia, we we had origination points out of Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne. I think Melbourne is is definitely an opportunity that we can look at, and I'll touch on that as well. And then origination points out of Japan. We had a lot of origination points out of Japan.

Even for the ones that we maintain, the seed inventory has dropped, due to the exit of some carriers. So these are no secret. They're the ongoing headwinds that we're facing. The weaker yen against the dollar. And I think in this particular case, the initial reaction for the exchange rate had been, we're gonna hold off.

I'm going to Hawaii because once everything writes itself, we'll we'll go back again. And now that this has really become become the norm, I think visitors in Japan because of their interest in Hawaii are gonna start to come. And I think the marathon I pointed out was an indication. You know, we had 10,000 participants in the marathon. And going into this year, they're anticipating 12,000 out of Japan alone.

Again, China relationships, I think hopefully that is improving. We've we've asked that Hawaii be considered for air slot should that be opened up. And another factor that's weighing in on all long range flights is the shortage of equipment. Both Boeing and Airbus are behind on delivery, so that's having an impact as well.

This gives you a indication of what we're losing in the international markets, but also I wanna point out if I forget, our East Coast service to Hawaii is also an area that we need to be conscious of.

We need to build that back up as well because those passengers flying out of the East have a tendency to stay longer in Hawaii. This is just touching on all the air service that we had. And again, Taipei have no regard. Key markets that we wanna look at. And getting into it further, the reason why we think Taipei is of interest to us and it had been in the past is because of all the business coming out of Southeast Asia.

Right now, they're going through Tokyo or Korea. And if you look at it a little bit further, you can see if we tied all of those and ran them through Taiwan, that would create easily a flight that we could maintain consistently. And this is just giving further information of how many people are transient through, the different airports, Narita, Haneda and through Seoul as well as some others from Southeast Asia to Hawaii. 59,194 passengers on Southeast Asia. This is some...

Something that we are targeted on. We're talking to our Taipei representative, Andrew. Because if you look on the bottom, we had service for China Airlines before. EVA Air has considered it, and now Starlux is in the market. And there's some interesting dynamics between EVA Air and Starlux that might be to our advantage.

So we're gonna go further into that with those carriers. This is originating out of Australia. And here again, right now, we only have direct service out of Sydney. But at one point, we had Melbourne and Brisbane. And so there's an opportunity out of Melbourne definitely to get direct service back to Hawaii.

And keep in mind, when we look at direct service in your travels, you wanna make... You wanna have direct service to your your destination so you can get to especially your vacation experience right away. These are passengers originating out of Melbourne. They'll go through Auckland. They'll go through Menjivar they even go to the West Coast to transfer back to Honolulu to get here.

And very similar with, Sydney and Brisbane. So Melbourne is definitely a target for us. Auckland, I I bring this one up because we lost service out of Auckland from Hawaiian Airlines. So that creates only Air New Zealand serving that that marketplace. And you can see that even people that are traveling out of Auckland will go to Sydney or Nandi before they take the direct service on Air New Zealand.

So that is a concern. We need to create or have a competition in the market. One, to keep the fares reasonable and to give customer options. And this is just a breakdown of Australia's or New Zealand's market. And then Incheon, we have similar situation happening here.

You had Hawaiian pullout. You have, Korean Air and Asiana now merging. You have some smaller carriers, Prima Air and Trinity that will potentially enter the market as well as possibly Jin Air, which is the low cost carrier out of Korea and some part of Korean airlines. But in the past, we've had carriers like Scoot, AirAsia X, in the domestic market. Allegiant used to serve us.

So, route development is important. But right now, with how fuel prices are, route maintenance is a big concern. We need to keep the load factors up on these carriers so that they will continue to service. Because once they start reducing their frequency or their seat inventory by downsizing the aircraft, then we start to get choked. And that's not good for the marketplace.

So those are the areas that we're we're focusing on Taipei, Melbourne, and also the East Coast development of long haul flights out of the East Coast. And that is all I have. Do you have any questions for me?

Let's start with our members. Any questions?

I have one question regarding, you know, some of your soul and Incheon guest market. That has been an area that has long ties, you know, with, state of Hawaii. Yeah. Are there any other ways of, you know, kind of preserving that that, you know, ongoing relationship even with the shrinking of, you know, carrier

Yeah. I availability. There's there's ways to boost the market. I touched on loyalty programs and redemption of loyalty programs, both from the hotel side as well as the airline side. And being able to reduce the out of pocket from the consumer by utilization of loyalty points.

And the airlines love that because that's, you know, a debt on them is the loyalty banks. So they'd like to see their customers utilize those loyalty points. So those are the types of things that we're hoping to implement to offset fuel costs and airfares.

So Lion pulled out of that market, but where does Alaska Air stand? Do they no longer have any, different flights?

No. Oh, so sad. Yeah.

Okay. I'll I'll come see you and share another slide. Okay.

There were a number of new routes

that Korea... Which which airline was it that from Korea that established new routes coming to Hawaii?

We had both Asiana and Korean, but those are merging. And so you're gonna probably see some shrinkage in in total air seats because of the combination. But you have other carriers like Prima Air, Trinity Air that are... Prima Air is not doing daily service. They're doing, I think, three or four times a week.

Trinity is looking to come into the market as well. But all of this, they're all kind of handcuffed because they're not receiving their orders of seven eight sevens or Airbus long haul. So we we take, especially in the international market, we take a different type of aircraft to get them here. So they're all in the same boat.

They wanna have more routes, but there's a supply shortage for

them. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. I have a question about, you know, about, you know, folks connecting from Nari to Haneda, Incheon, and Manila to get here from other countries like Southeast Asia

and Taiwan and Hong Kong.

What is the average... How long is the average layover if someone's flying from those areas at an

affordable rate? Yeah.

There there is a legal connection time that is established by the airlines. They gotta have at least two hours on the ground. But there are some layovers that could extend beyond that. Like how often? Like...

There's some that are four. They're not ideal connections. And that's why, you know, ease of access and getting to your your destination is so important, especially in a leisure market like ours. So if we were able to, connect, the Southeast Asia through Taipei and then straight to Hawaii, it'd be a much shorter, route for them.

And my my... Another question that I have is just like, you know, of the Asian airlines that are flying to Hawaii, how many of them are adding fuel surcharges at this moment?

Oh, out of Japan, all of them, and out of Korea, all of them.

My Philippine Airlines talking back.

I'm not sure.

I can check on that.

So the difference is with the international carriers, they add a fuel surcharge onto their original, airfare. In North America, they just increase the airfare. Yeah.

You know, I know that we're having talks with other major airlines to fly here. Can you just give us an overview of what those conversations sound like from their end as to why they're choosing not to or they have... Are moving forward to working to create a threat?

Well, a lot of it has to do with them seeing the state's investment in the destination. Because once they start a route, they wanna make sure that they can maintain a certain load factor because they're not making much money off of Hawaii flights because it's a leisure destination. So when they see the direction that's coming from, the state in terms of supporting these markets, that's when they're they're interested.

Senator Coit, do you have a question?

Yeah. Thank you, Chair. So David, you know when you say that you don't see... Well, they don't see that the state is supporting. What kind of support are are are they asking from the state in regards to, you know, the flying to Hawaii as the destination, and then I'm assuming that the return is light.

It's a it's a light loaded, well, turnaround for them.

So my my comment was that they see the interest that the state has in marketing from some of these origination points where in the past, maybe those conversations weren't ongoing. So we've lost business to other markets. It's it's investing in marketing in the origination point for Hawaii.

So so what would be the recommendation on our side for the investment if that's the case? You know, because how how do we keep... If, you know, I I see Korea starting to make its, you know, its way into Hawaii. But how how does the state commit or anything like that?

Well, you know, Korea is a good good example. We've asked Korea to... Or Korean airlines to consider going direct into Kona so we can justify the customs and border patrol facility over there. We are talking to Joe about that as well. But being able to help initiate a new route like that and promote it as well as continuously maintain visibility for the destination so that they can keep their load factors at a reasonable level that they're not gonna be losing money all the time.

And, you know, with oil prices the way they are, I would say that a... At the beginning of the year with oil at 45 to 55 a barrel, having a 70 to 75% low factor would help... Would be a good place for a carrier. With oil at 95 a barrel, we're probably talking 85 to 90 bold

factors.

So if we can invest in the market and be able to offset some of the consumers cost to make them interested in flying to the destination like loyalty programs and getting that from the care partners like the carriers or even the hotel partners. I think that would really help boost the interests.

So David, have you guys had the conversation with the airlines as well as some of the hotel partners and, you know, I wanna point out Alaska and Hawaii, you know, because I constantly see us, you know, and it's been great for the residents of Hawaii, that they can fly into Japan because the yen is so weak. Yeah. But our investment is heavily in Japan on behalf of the state. How has Hawaiian and Alaska as well as, you know, gel and taken to to that point.

Okay. I I can... Maybe the best example is what we're experiencing with Kauai. After the storm, we are trying to initiate a campaign for Kauai, and carriers like Hawaiian have stepped up and indicated that they wanna participate in, you know, helping boost that campaign. So all these conversations have to continuously be ongoing.

There was a question earlier about the, ag forms and visitor forms. We've talked to the airlines locally here, but that conversation needs to go to their in flight departments because it's inconsistent on when the in flight crew enforces the the ag forms and the visitor information forms. But we need to constantly have this relationship with the airlines. We gotta remember that we're isolated. And it's not just for tourism.

It... It's for overall commerce and business for the state.

No. No. I I get it. But you know what I see a lot here, which I think United has done a very good job. Every time I saw United coming back from the main head to Hawaii.

They they're... They sat right there with the QR code, and they're like, have you filled it out? And if you and if you don't have the confirmation, they'll let you board. So I I was kinda shocked when I saw that those numbers went down.

Yeah.

Paper trail versus online gap. So to some point, I would assume that the airlines would all be on board because that data is crucial to us in how we go about having the further conversation in our next... I I kinda wanna figure out how do we... You know, in this case, the airlines should be doing it to help themselves as well.

Agreed. There's inconsistencies in terms of ground operation as well as in flight that we need to bridge and get consistent.

Thank thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you. Since we're on the topic of airlines, this kinda touches you on destination management as well. Are we working with the airlines to see if there's any educational videos or, you know, transcripts that they can read out if they don't have a personal television device on their seats to, you know, talk about the laws that we have in terms of our wildlife.

Okay. You're you're dating me now. So before before... You're absolutely right. We could have in flight video which would go through the entire cabin.

And now with personal devices, I'm sure there's a way that we can connect to the personal device so that a message comes through. I don't know how, but that's something we can look into.

Okay. Yes.

If if I may add to that. So our team, our visitor... Sorry. Through our visitor education, post arrival marketing, program, we are looking at working with the airlines to provide videos, to them. That's in the works for this upcoming, year and starting January.

you need to find post arrival? Is it the minute they get onto the plane?

Do

I'm sorry.

In the airplane.

On the airplane. Not after they arrive. So

In the airplane.

So they're in, like, Los Angeles. The minute they step on

Yeah. And

you're like, that's when... No.

Usually, well, back in the day, usually it was pre arrival.

Yeah.

So like four to five minutes out, you start to get this information about how you should act when you're in Hawaii. Yeah.

So like four to five minutes out, you start to get this information about how you should act when you're in Hawaii. Yeah.

Okay. Maybe just to piggyback on what you were talking about with, trying to push it to their devices. Most, most airlines offer free Wi-Fi network, and that should give you access to push some type of message to anybody who's on the network. I know a lot of the airlines have switching maybe from having natural screens where people watch a movie to just offer free Wi-Fi so people watch their other device. There's actually a lot of information you can...

So you can intercept the signal. So

they're actually... The aircraft itself has, like, its own wireless network. And when people log on, you should be able to push a a message or whatever. Same thing how, like, on the device, on on the back of the seat where it pauses a movie. So everybody has to watch something.

So... Okay. You gotta talk to the airlines about that, but there's a lot you can do with that. Okay.

Thank you.

So when do you think that the video would be developed by or produced?

so currently, the team is looking through all of the assets that we have. And, you know, we we have also, like, in the past partnered with DLNR on some of their messaging videos about, you know, hiking safely and all of that. So we're... The team is taking an inventory right now and looking at next year to see how we can get it on the airlines or work with those that don't have it. But I know, like, for example, some airlines already do have video.

I've seen it. Like, Hawaiian Airlines has it. Alaska, for example, on ANA, I know they were playing DLNR's video. So I think it just depends on the airlines and just working with them on what they have and don't have.

And, like, you know, what if an airline were to say, no, I don't wanna air air this video, or is it possible to require them to do it? Or is...

The state could.

The state could?

Yep.

Alright. Thank you. Any other questions?

Alright. Just a quick follow-up, Chair.

Go ahead.

Caroline, I'm curious to know, where where is the DMAPs in regard to input and messaging with tourists?

Yeah. So regarding the DMAPs, so this year, right, I mean, this this round two of the DMAPs focuses on hot spots. So when it comes to messaging, there are hot there are some hot spots where we talk about visitor messaging about those hot spots. But in general, regarding just overall traveling responsibly throughout the, you know, the state, That's through our visitor education post arrival marketing program.

Oh, okay. But but, basically, they are engaged and involved in regards to mentioning or people to tune in over the phone?

Yes. So using the feedback or the input we got through our... Through the development of this this past round of DMAPs. You know, we have that information. And so we would we would be using that information that we heard from the community.

Okay. Perfect. Sounds good. Thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Are there any other questions right now for Air Alps?

Maybe as a follow-up to either David or Caroline. You know, if there were an opportunity to tie the hotel and the airline loyalty points together, then as an incentive, you know, if there's a way that you could, require that people either filled out... Well, we filled out their, you know, Department of Ag form as well as participated in one of the resident surveys.

So to be eligible for, you know, the loyalty points, if there was a way to at least automate some of that, then likely would be would incentivize good behavior, which helps us, you know, with our planning would be kind of like a a very powerful stimulus. And Citrusize.

I think from the hotel and airline standpoint, if that helps fill their rooms and their seats, you know, but it it kinda brings everyone together. Maybe that's some way that we could use. Because I think for, you know, the hotel room costs and airline costs, those are two big changes that have occurred within the last few years. So offsetting some of that by doing something that should be relatively painless would seem like a good way to, you know, create good behavior.

Senator, can I say that it wasn't my idea? That is a good idea though.

Well, I think, you know, the hotels and the airlines would be very interested in, you know, how we might be able to maximize a package where everybody potentially could benefit.

Yep. No. Very good. Yeah.

Aye, you know, I, I, I really want us to focus on airline development because that ultimately brings in competition to lower airfares for to lower airfares for for residents too. Yep. Because, you know, as you can see, it's very expensive now. I think, like, even as a round trip to Maui is about 300 something dollars. And so thank you for this era.

Thank you.

So I'm gonna introduce Mitzi Yonezawa, our new chief branding officer. And please be gentle with her because she's only had thirty three weeks. So she's been drinking from a fire hose. Yeah.

I can see you all.

Hi. Good morning. Speaking of fire hose, just came back. I moved from Oregon yesterday. So...

But all... And this is my first time into the Capitol, but I look forward to coming here many times. So it's really quickly from a brand marketing standpoint, just just know that this is an initial take. There's a lot of work in progress that as you've heard from the strategic plan and what from David is saying in a lot in a lot of the conversations, and then Caroline and her leadership around how we're bringing that plan to life.

So from the brand marketing standpoint, it kinda pulls all together.

And I'm well... I'm already loving a lot of the ideas that I'm hearing from you in terms of, like, just connecting the consumer journey a lot easier through incentives, through, you know, through videos, etcetera. So the reality is that we know that Hawaii tourism is at a it's at a tipping point right now. A lot of that has to do in terms of of just how the landscape has changed, how our consumers and our travelers have changed.

And that really, awareness is no longer a challenge for us.

It's really just how do we create more value so that they continue continue to choose us and keep coming back. Right? When you think about the global marketplace around the different types of destinations that we are seeing... I mean, we've had at the conference, we had Mr. Noor sharing around the insights around just from Asia. Right?

In terms of, like, we recognize that there's a lot of global destinations that are... That also have beautiful beaches, that also have wonderful food. Right? And they actually can be cheaper than coming to Hawaii. So we recognize that competition is relentless right now.

We also know that social and digital has made the world a lot smaller. So there's a lot more connectivity, there's a lot more that how quickly we've seen how narratives can get out. And so there's a lot of work that's been done.

I enjoyed a lot of the momentum thanks to to Caroline, to Jill, and the team, and our island partners around how do we just get in front of that and course correct that, or even just make sure that we are setting foot first around what that narrative is gonna be. So the digital, and then, of course, recognizing how quickly mobile has become the the gateway, if you will, for travel for a lot of us.

And we're seeing that come to life and and we recognize, I mean, how the the the the visitors sent... Is such is such a dynamic person now and as travelers. They're researching more. They can do a lot more on their own. There's also a lot more opportunities for them to get paid media from OTAs or the online travel advisors.

They're actually, because of the amount of information out there, we're seeing it as a result of shorter booking windows, right? And also through that... And whether there is global market economic reasons and they're short... Staying less. So I understand the connectivity around how businesses also feel a little bit worried.

But at the same time, I think when we're looking at the action now, the positive of that is that we're seeing now how people understand how it's all connected together. So I think that's something we wanna build on. And then they're spending more in that short amount of time. Right? So I think when we look at that, overall, visitors' needs have really evolved faster than we have.

So that provides a huge opportunity for us in terms of how do we be able to make the foundational and actual funk, fundamental changes, to... And really create this action plan around how can we be able to get out in front? How can we set the strategy and the vision? So we're really excited about that. Start of it...

A lot of it has to start with ourselves first. Right? As a Hawaii Tourism Authority, how do we become that leader in that space? How do we gain the trust of our communities, of our partners, to be able to and make sure that the vision that that we are establishing is really going to be clear and it's simple. So I just started with a couple just a one pager around, like, what do we believe about Hawaii?

And this is a work in progress, David said, two, three weeks in. But basically, we do know that Hawaii stays with anyone who comes to visit. And our mission is to steward tourism so that it thrives. We want to honor our people, our culture, and our islands. And then for the future is that we want a thriving Hawaii where people, place, and culture can really flourish and grow together.

So our call to action is to our visitors is to come experience the Hawaiian Islands. And that's where you're kind of starting to see through the marketing around how Hawaii stays with you. Right? So all of that is connected in terms of what do we believe in, where are we going, and then what are we asking people to do? But once you...

When... Some of the work in terms of, like, what I was looking at in terms of when we think about brand, the brand of Hawaii, which is really powerful, we have to also set in set in place our standards. Right?

Brand standards are how a brand is represented across every single consumer touch point, whether that's as soon as you step into an airplane or the videos that you're watching to when you're getting into your hotel room, to the businesses that you visit and experiences that you have when you're coming here. So we wanna make sure that we have our brand standards set, leading with purpose.

We wanna honor our community and our culture. We wanna be distinct. We have to be distinct in this competitive marketplace. So how do we be unmistakable for Hawaii? And not just like, you know, there's we don't wanna be...

First, we have such rich depth in our culture of our people, of the activities that we know and love every day. And so when we think about those stories and and how do we create inspiration for visitors, we really wanna make sure that we evoke emotion. So Hawaii means something special to each of us, and it could mean different things to a lot of different people. So how do we just make sure that we have a breadth of stories to really evoke these emotions? Style.

Here, I have obsessed craft. Craft in a sense of, like, we really have to be proud of the work that we're putting out in front of our visitors. A lot of that is gonna come in my role is in terms of brand management. So how do we manage the brand of Hawaii? So that it comes through, that it's a level of excellence that we're proud of, that everyone understands where we're going, and then they can see it in every single consumer touch points.

But to do that, we also know that we have to evolve and we have to move faster together so that we can have the impact and really be able to influence with intention. So those are our brand standards. And then when you think about how it all comes together, right, we're talking a lot about a a unified one Hawaii or a system. When you think about the brand overall, again, it's not just marketing. Marketing is everything that we think about.

So when it's grounded in our community and grounded in destination management, the things that we think of like marketing functions, whether that's digital, social, the sporting events that we are partnering on that Milton's gonna walk you through after. Our meetings and conventions and incent... Incentives. Right? Our experiences that we have, the PR, the communications that we output in terms of messaging to the world, the partnership, and how do we work together across whether it's airlines, hotels, local businesses, and the community.

All of this altogether is really how it comes together. And HTA's role is to really establish that direction so that our industry can participate, our contractors can execute, our communities inform, the research really measures, and then how do we get the results and be able to guide the next step in the next direction? So from a strategic priority standpoint, one, we talked... Caroline mentioned the high high value visitors as who we establish.

We have to continue digging more into that because there's a lot of different audiences when we think about whether that's romance or sports or, active action lifestyles like trail running.

There's a lot of different segments of different types of of this high value consumer and this visitor that we need to be able to start thinking about how do we communicate and reach them on the right platforms. Speaking of platforms, we have to accelerate digital. Right? I know it's...

Rep. Tam, this is an area that you're interested in particularly around like AI. We recommend how AI is influencing our world from the daily things to also, of course, to the big things like tourism. So as you think about accelerating digital, how do we modernize how we reach and guide our visitors leveraging AI as a tool? Maximize partnerships. I love that word maximize.

So Senator Fukunaga, I think when she said around how do we maximize our partnerships with airlines and hotels, it's how do we build those relationships and across the industry, markets, and other sectors including like agriculture. Right? And we think about how do we then be able to continue to grow access to our islands with the sustaining current and grow new routes. Those relationships are gonna be really critical. The last one is compound impact.

This is how do we align and orchestrate across our islands, our markets, our moments, and our partners so that we can better have a coordinated calendar, to be working against where the full power of the brand of Hawaii comes together. And also we have an always on approach as well to know that through the shoulder seasons or you won't... So there will always be a consistent fuel line into Hawaii.

One of the big swings that we're excited about, speaking of digital and and AI, is around this global support services. So something that we're ideating upon but we feel really strongly about is that how do we unify our trusted destination information and having gohawaii.com and our Go Hawaii app becoming the the hub and the information source.

Now the information will be gathered in through our industry partners in partnership together to then be able to be used across our global market. So how do we have Go Hawaii and our our app become as the the hub for all of this information? By having a consistent message and information living in one space, but also being able to consider where it's connecting to. So for example, how do we connect out to Tibet? How do we connect out to the the parks and recreation?

How do we connect out to, to websites around, like, major events like Merrie Monarch, for example? The connectivity is really critical, but we do need a hub for that. So we're really excited about how this can become a scalable option for us, and then consider things like social and paid media to deliver timely and connected journeys for conversion to get people here and to experience and come back again. Right? When you do all this, this is a from two slide that has a lot of words.

But in general, one, we recognize that there has been a lot of, fragmented efforts that has been happening around individual programs, our market plans, our islands, and partners operating independently. And so now we're we're recognizing and seeing that sometimes we become silo and competitive with one another, but really we wanna drive a coordinated plan. It's gonna take a lot of effort, but the team is excited and recognizes the criticalness of being able to be able to align and coordinate and have HDABs at source.

A lot of top of funnel marketing in terms of just creating awareness out there, but really we need to pull through and think about not just people... Again, awareness isn't the problem.

So it's awareness to then engagement to learn more and then how do we convert them in. So really thinking about integrated marketing plans that connect that inspiration to action. So the visitor can go from consideration to planning to booking and then experience. I think a lot of times we look at... We think about having more visitors is the best thing.

But really we recognize that we want to better manage that visitation. So you think about measuring success by volume, going more into value than the value creation that it brings. And how do we distribute that visitor spending and consider the visitor flow and the community capacity, and and that really practices destination stewardship. The last one is around, like, planned but passive to really... We wanna go to an activated and responsive team.

We saw some of that great work around with with... Happened with Kauai and the response from there. So So I think when we continue... Leverage continuous research, we really look at the playbooks that we're creating, partner with the communities and the partners to respond real time. Then it begins to help us anticipate needs and then adjust plans, and we just become much quicker and evolve faster together.

This is just an example, and I think my slide note is a little bit wonky. But basically, if we were to look at, okay, how does that... We think about from a calendar perspective, we look at all of the different markets. Right? This is again just an example of when key markets like China and when do they have their Chinese New Year as well as other Asian markets and Lunar New Year.

When are summer breaks happening? When are spring breaks happening? When are golden weeks? All of these things we know is to be true because that happens culturally within our markets. How do we then better align against different things that we have going in Hawaii?

And then when you start to see and you kinda lay it out in one page, you're like, oh, actually, there's some opportunities to really be able to... What I call compound impact around. We can recognize when things like a Hawaii Stays With You campaign can really come to life. But then you can also help the other markets recognize opportunities for them in between those major pillars. So this is just a...

This is not an actual plan. This is more just an initial thinking around how we can better align and an example of that. And I will say they're, like, not too freaked, Milton. It's not that we signed every one of this, but again, it's just recognizing all the things that are happening within Hawaii considered. And that's it from my section in terms of brand marketing.

But we'd love to have any questions that you may have.

Do you have any statistics on uses, you know, for Go Hawaii app or any of the other switch question? I don't have it seem that you know if we knew where people were clicking exactly information people were looking for that would help us.

Absolutely. I don't have those offhand. I can get them, but you're absolutely correct. We need to be measuring our traffic. We need to be measuring engagement and what people are clicking on. I think those are all things that are gonna re...

Really matter in terms of how do we measure things and also learn. And then it helps us be able to be more nimble too in terms of what content people are looking for to maybe bring it up top. Or like, you know, so I think those are really matter in and how people are that click through rate is really important to you. Thank you.

Know, on that slide right there.

Our our brand managers and marketing managers utilizing the funds that they have for marketing around this kind of schedule? So during, like, I don't know, Golden Week in China, they're pouring more money into marketing, like, least before it's kinda entice them to wanna visit Hawaii. Or...

Good question. I don't... I wanna assume yes, but I can get that answer for you. I would be surprised if... Yeah.

I would assume that they absolutely would be considering their market. I think the the point here is more around together, not just that one market, like having, so like Chinese New Year. Like, our our marketing partners, yes, they should... They... I think they're looking at their market specifically, but the power becomes when we also say, okay, Oceania, you're also on summer break.

And then look at these things that we have happening on the ground. It just enables more people to then... That's when we can align with our airlines. That's when we can align with our hotels and our businesses to make it more of a cohesive integrated plan versus just a Chinese New Year. Hey, come go to Hawaii. You know?

And a company gets becomes much more amplified and bigger.

And I see that some of these are actually, like, signature events. Right? And they received grants from HTA. Are we doing anything to not require them, but you recommend that they use some of that grant money towards marketing their event outside of Hawaii. Because I feel like if they're going to get tourism dollars from the tourism authority Then they should use some of that grant money, not just for operational cost, but for marketing cost as well. Yeah.

I will actually read that to speak to that. Yeah. Please.

So in our... In the upcoming RFP for signature events, in their budget, we are making sure that they spend at least 50% in marketing outside. Yeah.

Yeah. So there's actually like a proposal that goes up, RFP. Yeah. That shows that how many percentage has to go to marketing. So when they submit the proposal to us, we actually go over it.

There's an evaluation process that happens that goes into how much is being... How much is spent to work for marketing and campaigns, promotions, etcetera.

Before I move on to any other questions that I may have, anyone else have any follow-up questions based off of what Senator and I just talked about? Senator DeCoite, do you have any questions? Online?

No. I'm good. Okay.

Okay. So I guess the next thing I also wanna talk about, like, you know, what are we doing to combat conflicting messages on social media and into touching on AI? You know, how are we ensuring that AI does not represent our culture and our brand?

Yeah. Good question. So I think that a lot of it is, you know, using just the Kauai response as an example. There's there's power in how quickly we can get out in front before we let the narrative on its own. I think, that requires a lot of coordination.

So sometimes it does feel a little slower than what we need to. But I think that's where the conversations that in terms of with our partners to be able to quickly know. And I think, like, once we establish that behavior of, like, hey, partnership together, and we want to be able to serve you and support you in this time, and we need to know the information that you're looking for, I think it... It's... We're creating those best practices now.

Because a lot of times, what we don't want to happen is the correction that needs to happen afterward because you can't, you know, other than going directly to each and individual creator, whoever's posting that to kinda have a conversation. I think there is opportunity, though, within, like, the global services support... The global support services that we're talking about in terms of digital.

If there is some sort of, like, you know, chat bot or an actual team that creates it, we're still in the the mix of what that means. But in terms of having of that connection to be able to get some of those questions answered is gonna be a really great way to get in front as well as on the back end, be able to help course correct.

So I think there... And I think through other marketing in terms of, like, the partnerships that we have, the alignment across the messaging is gonna be really important, and that should come through again through those partnerships and making sure we're building that response plan or... And those narrative buildings together. The other piece around AI, that is gonna take a lot of governance. Right?

I think it's... There's AI... We can also... In front of when we're partnering and paying for AI, there's ways to get in front and making sure that we're setting the guardrails early. So that is one thing that we we know and have to lean into and also, like, research upon.

I also think, the consumer themselves, they're... I would say majority. Don't quote me on that, but I think I would say that a lot of people, do have a a good gauge on what is real and what is not. So, like, my... I have a nine year old son, and that generation is very quick to understand what what is AI generated.

So I think as... As we continue to catch up to that in terms of, like, understanding and how we protect and govern, our brand, that's gonna be critical. But at the same time, we know we're not... You know, the AI moves so quickly that we have to also trust that our visitors... The more that we better protect our brand and have what put out there to the world, people will trust us more than something that they feel might be not real.

But it's gonna take a lot of of work together. So...

Yeah. I just... Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.

One more point that I want to mention is that, you know, there's an educational aspect about this that many people feel like Kauai is just one big island and that Yeah. You know, during the storms that we recently had, you know, hurricane is hitting Kauai, but, you know, parts of Maui is still open and, you know, for visitors, people feel like the entire islands are affected.

You know, going around that, are we also doing anything to, you know, basically, and not, I wouldn't, I would say just educate folks that winded boys like a chain of islands.

Yeah. Yeah. Then that's, you're absolutely right. We have to do that. I think there's pockets of ways that we do that.

Aye, but I think the more that we kind of, I mean, people... They're probably sick of me telling, but it's kind of like... I use my son a lot. What... In the bathroom with it...

In the bathtub with all sorts. You kinda have to pull all of it together to be able to make sure that we can have that right messaging.

But I think the ways that we once we become that hub and that trusted hub and then be able to show the different islands, I know a lot of that work already exists, but I think there's still opportunities, obviously, if people are still not clear on the different islands that exist, but also, like, how geologically different they are too from each other, I think is really important. So more work to be done there for sure. Thank you.

Yeah.

Any other questions, Senator? Anyone online with any questions? Thank you so much, Mitzi. Welcome to the ringer.

Thank you. Happy to be here.

You say that now.

Hello and good morning, committee members, chairs. Thank you for this opportunity. Just wanted to, do a quick shout out to my... Our team, our... Caroline and our leadership team for all that they've done.

Especially, excited to work with Mitzi who is our new our newest chief brand officer. And, working with her, a couple of days was able to see some of the new ideas and thoughts it's fresh eyes it's bringing into the, the agency. So really excited to start working with her. Before I start, real quick, I just wanted to set the tone real quick. So back in the sixties, there was two countries that was...

Were at war. These two countries were at war with each other, and then all of a sudden, they stopped. The World Cup tournament was rolling into town. So these countries who were at war with each other, all of a sudden, they had stopped to participate in the World Cup. And so that shows the impact of what sports tourism can bring to to a country, especially to what sports tourism can bring to Hawaii, which is why I'm excited.

You've heard a lot of the downturn in the markets, business, closing to Senator Fukunaga's comments about, you know, just the general feeling among the residents with business is closing. In fact, there's two restaurants in my neighborhood that's closing a long time, Big City Diner at the one week mall. That's closing. And then the Meat Chicken is also closing. So there's a lot of, you know, that feeling that, oh, what was us and what are we gonna do?

Well, I'm excited to to announce and to update you that sports is picking up. There's a lot of activities that's coming into town that we're excited to bring and partner up with, especially with a lot of the, professional teams and organizations. We recently had one, I think... Or do I control the slide? Oh, the outer.

Oh, the space bar.

I was waiting for this slide. So as you can see on the calendar, there's a lot of events and tournaments that are coming to town. A lot of these that you see on on the calendar is... They're actually... Most of them are professional partners that we've established that we're working with to to sign contracts and to work with on events and tournaments.

So, for example, in October, we had a pickleball event that just happened. Great numbers, three to 4,000 local veterans that came out to participate. We have a couple of, we partnered up with World Surf League. They have three tournaments that are coming up on the North Shore. So it'll bring a lot of business towards the North Shore end and and generate a lot of, tourists to come out and support some of those small businesses in that area.

What's great about the World Surf League is... And and this is something that we have to do, the agency has to do. Aye... That I've actively taken part in into writing to the contract is not just, have them, come out and do a tournament, but also get the community involved. So what we've done in this past, contract is with this World Surf League is right into their contract that they have to engage the community.

And one way of doing that is engaging, I'm not sure if you heard of Hono finals. It's a girls surfing league or club that is... That was running sort of on their own for a while with Damon Kazama and his group.

So what we've done is writing to the contract of our World Surf League, which has a global platform that they would come in and sort of mentor a lot of these and sort of mentor a lot of these high school surfers, the girls into their programs. So a lot of these girls, they may not...

Education might be secondary to them, but as they go out, they're able to, you know, explore their talent at surfing. And so we've we've combined a lot of these, we're working with a lot of these partners to generate these kinds of programs to strengthen not just our partnership, but also their partnership with the communities. Okay? So, again, some of these activities are events that are taking place.

Southwest, the Maui Invitational that's happening again on Maui and Lahaina, and it's all bringing opportunities and strengthening the communities, bringing economic impact to those businesses in that area.

Moving on, December. December's gonna be busy. We've got a lot of things that are happening, Pipeline Masters, the Honolulu Marathon. Doc David mentioned earlier the kind of business and impact the, Honolulu Marathon does bring to the state. I don't have the numbers yet, but, I'm working with doctor Berrault to get some of those numbers.

But just to work to see how many participants. In last year's event, they had about 40... 30 to 40,000, again, with the Hawaii Bowl, working hand in hand with the University of Hawaii. In December, we're looking at the participation or activation similar to what we did with the Los Angeles Rams at SoFi Stadium. We're We're doing the same kind of promotion or getting the same kind of marketing exposure at Lumen Field with the Seattle Seahawks, same with the LA...

Las Vegas Raiders at the Allegiant Stadium in Vegas. So some of these things that we are looking at partnering up and strengthening our opportunities to get more exposure, get more marketing value in in some of these top destinations for Hawaii. And then moving on to January, there's a couple of things that are coming up really quickly. The Sony Open. Now I get a lot of questions about...

So did PGA leave? Not really. PGA still are in town. We are still working with PGA, to our... But on the championship side, which means these are a lot seasoned or veteran golfers, which to me is a great partnership because, I grew up with a lot of golfers that I know.

For example, David Duval, Chris DiMarco, Ernie Els, Vijay Singh, you've got Jim Furyk. So a lot of these golfers have, have had their careers. This tournament brings them, has the opportunity to bring a lot of these golfers back to Hawaii. And what's nice about this tournament is that they're not here to just play and win the purse, but they're actually here to promote, the tournament. And while they're promoting the tournament, they're out in the community shaking hands.

In the past, you've seen a lot of the the golfers just sort of walk past and go to the next hole and get ready for the next hole. So for them, it's it's it's a tournament. But for these seasoned golfers, they're here to enjoy it with their families. So if they come to here at Waialae, they're they're not just gonna be in Waialae. Their families will be out participating in the activities, going out to the restaurants, catching an Uber.

You know, so all these things will support the community. And that's the kind of economic impact that these sporting events bring to Hawaii.

Okay. So we've come up with our strategic... Our sports strategic plan for, 2027.

And these are these are some of the goals that we're looking at. I've highlighted the, the point of three to strengthen and increase corporate partnership, again, with hotels, airlines, and some of the private sector, which is something that we haven't done in the past. It's it's... For us, I think it's about time that we not just carry the lion's share of the budget or the sponsorship or the fund or the funding.

So what I've done is I've actually went to the partners, and asked them, okay, if you guys wanna, not just depend on the state in caring or paying for it, we'd like to partner up with you.

So more of a match, funding. As we as we put up funding, we're asking some of our partners to also participate and help fund some of these events, sporting events. Because, again, it impacts a lot of the hotels, airlines, or restaurants. Many of the small businesses that feel the impact, the economic impact of these events, sporting events.

As we look at our our sports objectives, again, we have couple of objectives here, but the one that I'd like to highlight is strengthen Hawaii's brand visibility, target markets, US, Japan, Korea, Canada, and Oceana.

Hawaii has always been a destination for travelers to come and and relax at the beach, go hiking, do biking. But now what we wanna do is not just strengthen those, resources or things that people can do, visitors can do, but we also like to strengthen what Hawaii can provide... Can offer. A lot of these are sporting events. The ocean is a great resource that we have.

So we have... We do have a lot of events that involve surfing, kayaking, canoe racing. In fact, we just had them on the lookout. 10, and I hate to say it, but, the top 10, Tahiti brought in six. In fact, Tahiti came in one through four and six through 10.

Hawaii was able to capture four to five... Four, five, and six. So, again, bringing in a lot of these, visitors from different destinations to participate, but to also showcase Hawaii. Teams came from Japan, Japan, Taiwan. With teams from Tahiti as well as Australia and New Zealand.

So again, the exposure that we're getting is great exposure for Hawaii. It brings a lot of value and a lot of impact to Hawaii. And let me just... I do have quick number that I wanted to share with you. So we're talking about economic impact.

The... I have numbers for the Sony Open last year that was brought in and I did have it. So in the Sony Open, we had... The economic impact was $53,000,000 going back into the community. 1.2 to a lot of these, charities.

And we had about 10,000 locals that participated or came out and supported, walked the ground to Waialae Country Club. We had about 40,000 visitors that actually came, from different destinations to be here in Hawaii. So, again, this... These are the kind of numbers or or visitations that we are getting for the sporting events. Recent one with the Golden Saint Warriors at the Stan Sheriff Center Arena.

I don't know what the exact numbers, but if you could... If you were there, you could see and feel, you know, just the residents having a good time and being able to just enjoy themselves. Forget about the things that are happening, you know, with with the economy. These sporting events are not just for, for visitors, but they're for a lot for the locals to enjoy and to to participate. So we're...

I'm glad to be to be able to work with a lot of these, professional organizations and bringing a lot of their events to Hawaii. And a lot of them that I've talked to with the NFL, the NBA, they love Hawaii. If anything, for example, with the Golden State Warriors, we we worked with the Los Angeles Clippers. And when we were able to redo the contract, the players came back and actually petitioned and said, hey, we wanna go back to Hawaii.

You know, it's not the organization itself, but the players wanted to come back because of their experience that they have here in Hawaii.

So, that's all I have for this morning. We're only giving five minutes or ten minutes for my time. So I hope I was able to convey, the sporting events and, you know, the impact that we can bring to the, to the state.

Thank you. Members, any questions on sports services? Yes, representative.

In regards to like with the Honolulu marathon, is there the state have any type of collaboration or HTA have a collaboration with the marathon? They bring roughly, I mean, it's like over a 100,000 people a year.

Yeah. We do. So our collaboration, our partnership with the marathon is we fund them and then we also help them to sort of marketing watch. Where are they marketing? Where are they targeting?

A lot of our information. And we let them, you know, manage the marketing pieces, but we have... Our comments or our advice to them is is, like, specifically targeting certain cities or certain destinations. As far as, the participants or the people coming in for the marathon?

As far as messaging wise, it's come to Hawaii, relax, enjoy, you know, participate in the in the marathon. So the messaging with us, that's our part in collaboration with them.

Has there ever been any messaging, just an idea, encouraging them to the participants and the people come for the marathon shop local. Yeah. So small business... Local small business.

Japanese love Hawaii. Everything Hawaii. So when they're out here shopping, a lot of them will do... And they're very... In the past in the past years, a lot of them come in groups, and they would do everything the tour guide would tell them to do.

Now you see a lot of them are venturing off on their own. They're going to... I've seen them in Kailua. I've seen them all over the islands in in... On the North Shore Side.

So they're out venturing out to to these mom and pop places, restaurants that are hole in the wall places because they're looking to see where the locals eat or where the locals drive or where the locals stay. So they're out visiting their online research in a lot of these, destinations or trips before they come to Hawaii.

I know Japan Airlines just came out as a major response. Are they the title sponsor now? Right?

Yes. Correct. Do you think we would see more

more visitors coming from Japan because of that? Depending on what marketing they're doing, I'm sure.

Correct. Yeah. I I I thought... I think it's all about the marketing that the efforts that they put in. But again, with Japan, they still love white.

They they the downside is the yen, of course. So a lot of them, depending on the the reasons we get on the yen. That's always a a factor in the end. Thank you. Yeah.

Piggybacking off of that, do we work with these event organizer... Organizers on how many visitors are here because of their event?

Oh, yeah. Definitely. That's that's my daily conversation with them. When there's an event that's coming into town, I'm meeting with them weekly, and asking them these questions of how how are you promoting this? Where are you promoting it?

On what websites? Or are you directly doing it Are you pushing up? So these are some of the questions that I asked them to because I know I'm gonna be asked. A lot of them are coming back. And they've...

In the past, they haven't done it before.

Yeah.

So it's great that we come up with these ideas or or or discussions with them so that they can really see how they can promote Hawaii.

Yeah. Senator, do you have any questions?

Yeah. Sure. Milian, thank you for your presentation and the work you've been doing on the sports side of it. As you know, sports has been taken a a huge liking for me. I do know that, you know, sports has been a huge part in a lot of the rural areas, but more so, within sports tourism.

So I had a couple of questions because I know we've been super challenged, in this area. How important is it for us to help your division with a procurement exemption?

That's a huge, that's a big, big ask. I think procurement exemption is one of the toughest things. Now, coming from the private sector for twenty five years and coming from the state, it's a big it's a big hurdle for me, mostly because... And I'll give you a couple of reasons or examples. Working with a lot of these professional organizations, especially these professional organizations, their marketing opportunities are, like, we need the information now.

We need to turn this because, you've got to strike when the iron is hot. And if you don't, then you miss that marketing opportunity, that window, that you can penetrate different... You know, a a better or bigger market. And a lot of times because of this procurement, it just Kinda slows us down in the process of signing a contract, getting onboard with them, putting these things out so that we can, we can benefit. The value of not being able to...

I I can't stress how important it is because sometimes even one or two weeks is huge. It cuts the window for us to get into that marketing opportunity with them. And if the less time we have to market, then the less time we have to have visitors buy into the program. Because we're competing. We are competing with countries, Mexico, Taiwan, Bali, Vietnam, Thailand.

We're competing with these countries. And if we're not on the ball, if we cannot get this procurement through, that just it it just stalls things for us, that we have to wait in the back of the line.

There's opportunities in the past because of... Yeah.

So so Milton Milton, in regards to the LA Rams when they came to Hawaii, you know, we saw the challenges that was there. Again, you know, you talked about it a little earlier that they come into our communities. You know, I was, fortunate enough to be in Maui when they did come, they did volunteer the time, the Mahaena, rebuild, worked with habitat for humanity and the community. At that time, I also saw them directly in contact with our special Olympics kids that were there.

They did several, outreaches to the community.

They spend a lot of money with a lot of those businesses in Maui. And then I got to witness some of that. What what... I mean, you saw at that point, from then just the marketing structure, that came off of that because then we saw the Seattle Seahawks rolled in, and they rolled in without knowing they were going to the Super Bowl. And and the title rolled off of what we saw with the LA Rams.

Yep.

I mean, I I

when I talk to you and I ask you how many people you have working in your division, you're running this by yourself, or do you have help in your division or is that... What kind of help do you need? I mean, that's a lot to cover under your area.

I need a I need a division. No. Currently, we have... I'm grateful this... Spartan, DB has a program called the Kelly Moore program.

It's an internship program, paid internship program. So we... And and I was lucky... Fortunate enough to get somebody in the summer from SMU, local boy. And again, I was able to, grab somebody from Chaminade University.

So he's, working with me at this time. But we do... Having another helper would be great. I think, would help us sort of push the work along a lot faster and a lot easier because there's so many opportunities that teams wanna, partner up with Hawaii. And I think, you know...

And I'm glad, Senator, that you came out to the event because you could see with your own eyes what they do. When the Rams came into Maui, they actually built the whole locker room. I'm not talking just a paint job. They refurbished everything. The locker room was so nice.

Everything was new. And the way they did it was just professionally. It was really well done. And and the impact... So I was talking to one of the developments, when I came in, and you should have seen, the emotion.

Now, again, when you talk about business closing people, it's impacting these communities. And and I'm sure you're out in your communities and you can see. But when you actually see it from people and they're they're emotional about it because it really impacts them, and they're happy. And they're telling me, you know, thank you for bringing this to Maui, so that, you know, we can feel like we're we're on the road back to recovery. And it's the same for Kauai, what we're doing on Kauai.

And it's the same for the communities up in the North Shore. Things like this that... And so one of the other things is when I meet with professional teams, especially football teams, I ask them, okay. So what are you gonna do for communities? What's your impact that you're gonna be bringing to the communities?

Seattle... The Seahawks came on their own two years in a row, Came on their own, put on their own clinics. They asked me, here, we're gonna come in. So is there anything we need to know? I said, yes.

You need to go out on the Hawaii Island. Go on and we will do two camps. One in Hilo side and one in Kona side. And I can tell you the girls that came out to participate, it was unbelievable. So Aye, you know, I wish you had the opportunity to come out and really see the faces and the expression of these kids who may not have the opportunity to come to Oahu and participate.

But when we can take these events and these clinics out there, it just... It creates just an experience for them. I don't wanna take too much time. So any other questions? Thank you, Senator McCoy.

So so so Milton, I wanna highlight something here because I think the spin off of that clinic also gave traction to our our girls' flight football. And and and I gotta say it because I'm super impressed with the girls' flight football. But what I know, and and I've seen this all over The US is that when sports move, families move. And when families move, they stay longer. And and I've seen it firsthand.

I've seen kids that would be on the streets now engaged in the sports, but seeing the families behind that, you know, what are the outcomes and measurables within that that we've seen? Because, you know, like, it's not as if they targeted Maui. The Seahawks went to the Big Island.

You know, we've had, even with the Polynesian football, moved them around, they went to Kauai, but, but I just see sports moving all over and people don't acknowledge it as sports tourism, where I do see tourism economic impact day in and day out. Hotels benefit, airlines benefit, but businesses benefiting out of it.

Keep in mind, I just wanted to be real clear. I was there when that girl from the flag football

Yeah.

Out there cooking a coach. She caught that boy. Suddenly, he lost his necklace. So Aye... It was kind of funny.

But, I mean, that's what stemmed from just that one movement of the LA Rams and the marketing power we had on a soul fight for Hawaii.

You know, the backstory to that for those that weren't there. So this girl, Puka Nakua had challenged her if if she catches the ball on his defense, then she would give him the necklace, his his gold necklace. And she actually caught the the football and made a touchdown. So he was a man of his word. He took his necklace off and his gold necklace, I'm sure it was worth a couple of thousand, but he took that off and gave it to her.

But you cannot you cannot put, you know, for her, the experience of of going through that is, you know, it's phenomenal. And you can't put a value on it because, again, that kind of experience really elevates, you know, it just elevates everybody. Then they're not feeling gloom and doom anymore. They're happy. And you know what they're gonna do?

They're gonna go to work. They're gonna move the economy. And that's what we need.

So so just to add to one last thing, and and I know we're running short on time, but, you know, Milken, the Golden State Warriors and the LA Clippers, I had the opportunity of also being there. You know, what I saw in in the San Shurp was I saw a lot of our local people in there. I was sitting next to this young couple. A friend of mine had a lot... Had had allowed me to sit with them on the floor.

And I sat next to this couple, and I I leaned over and I told her, I said, how much did you pay for your tickets? Because she wasn't from Hawaii, her and her husband. And I was shocked to know that that seats that they were sitting in was... They paid a thousand dollars. This is what they told me.

They were from Hawaii, but they said it was cheaper for them to come and watch them play in Hawaii and pay for their air for for her husband and her son. Tell me what kind of relationship you have with the University of Hawaii when we talk about contracts and we talk about having relationships with the state state agencies and how we promote ourselves at a level where Hawaii should be the recipient of revenue, revenue stream based off of contracts.

Yeah. And I think Caroline talked about that. You know, our goal again with with this agency is to work with other agency... Other agencies so that we can, you know, better understand the contracts that we have with universe... University of Hawaii or other state agencies.

I'm working closely with Matt Elliott in his office to make sure that when there's an event that's coming into town, how can we benefit them? And for them, it's always about NIL. So for us, it's always, okay, how can we support you with with this program or with, you know, with the NIL, with their goals?

I I think it's vital that vital that we work together on a lot of these events, especially a sporting event like this or the Golden State Warriors because we can capitalize on some of the, the revenues that come in. How can University of Hawaii, you know, make more, so that they can they can ask you folks for less?

Perfect. And and and, Milton, I know we got a study Yes. Coming out. Is it study only for impacts of sports students?

So we sort of hit a hit a bump in the road for that. We had to pull back on that RFP twenty seven fifteen. It was mainly due because there was a 7% assessment fee that wasn't incurred when we had first initially put out the the RFP. So we had to pull that back, cancel it, and then reissue a new RFP. So it's 27 dash $2.00.

And that's the sports strategic, study green feed project. So that, we just sort of have to update or or move the timelines up pretty quickly. That's gonna be implemented. Keeping my fingers crossed and everything gets passed and the readings and approved, hopefully at the end of the month. So we'll start, November 1.

Sounds good. Thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you. I have, like, just a yes or no question. Are we in the process of submitting, bids to host sporting events? Yeah. How do we decide on which events we would like to pick?

So a lot of these events, we have scorecard that goes through. Each, each events has to reach, a threshold of, 7075%. And when they cross that 75% threshold, we take a look at it. The committee, the Advisory Board Committee will, support committee will take a look at it, and we'll go through the, each of them and see the impact. There's KPIs that we measure with them.

And then we'll meet with the organizers and and start negotiating back and forth. What's the sports committee? Sports committee, the advisory?

Yeah. It's just... It's within the advisory board.

Correct. So it's a it's a five member committee.

Okay. You talked about the procurement exception and earlier, representative Gilligan, getting asked what kind of, missed opportunities. Can you just give me, like, an example of one missed opportunity that happened because of... Because you don't have this procurement exemption.

Yeah. Let me see. What's it? Well, I I can give you... So a golden state, that one just happened.

Yeah. We were a few months out working on procurement, trying to go back and forth to get it approved. And it wasn't approved until, you know, couple of weeks out that the contract was approved. Everything got through... Went through.

So we... Typically, we'd like to get at least three, three to four months, approval or or procurement approval so that we can start marketing with them and working on some of the other stuff. But the and this is what's great about working or working with your clients close. If you can't catch them in the in the front end, what we try to do is catch them at the back end.

So having them look forward to the next event, to the next tournament, is where I try to solve.

I'm looking and the timeline is close to the start of the event. I'll go back to them and say, hey, you know, we didn't we know we didn't have enough time on the front end to promote this event, but is there an opportunity for us to maybe market after? And in fact, there is.

So Golden State has a program or an event they call Polynesian night, which is, gosh, fits right into with us, that they're able to market, promote, do sweepstakes, all those kind of events or marketing promotions campaigns that they can put on... That they can tack on the back end so that we can promote for the next event.

K. Thank you. Let's move on to contract update you.

May I say something real quick? I just wanted to circle back to one of Senator Du Quay's questions on how we can support Milton and the sports program more because, you know, Milton is a very hard worker. He's very humble guy. So he brought up the helium oil intern program. But I just wanted to quickly provide a quick numbers and to paint the picture. So with the stewardship slash forward slash regenerative tourism team, there are nine managers, and we currently have one AA supporting nine managers.

So we're in the process of converting one eight... One position to an AA so that we have two AAs for the nine, but Aye... Two AAs for nine managers.

Just just tell us tell us for... What is an a?

Oh, sorry. Administrative assistant. Sorry about that. And then so we're we're currently looking at two administrative assistants for nine managers, but I see Milton's workload and just how much he does for the sports program. And I truly believe he needs a dedicated AA to support him for all these...

For all the sports program because there's just so much coordination going on, so many meetings. And so I really feel that he can thrive even more so with one more AA. And as you can see from the previous presentation, really hard worker, really humble guys. So I really appreciate certain decoy's question on how we can better support the sports program. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay. So the next agenda item, is regarding contract updates. You asked for a contract updates on our vendors, Hawaii visitors at Convention Bureau and Hawaiian Council. So these are just, two of our vendors. We have over 50 contracts.

Just wanted to point that out. So our first, vendor or partner, Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau, They are a great team. We work well with them. Very good. We have a good partnership with them.

And they currently are our contractor for five contracts. So they are The US leisure contract, which is basically the brand marketing, getting visitors from The US market to Hawaii, the global support services contract. And this contract is about, you know, maintaining our gohawaii.com site, market trends, our route development, our knowledge bank or image library, and our sharing aloha program amongst other things, but those are the major components of it.

The next contract is called the island destination brand marketing and management services, and this is basically, the island chapter or island offices on each island, and they also support our international global marketing team. The next contract is for our Go Hawaii app, and that's basically enhancing the Go Hawaii app that we would really...

We're trying to push our visitors to use. And lastly, the global meetings, conventions, and incentives contract. So, again, these are all these are all the five contracts that are with the visitors bureau. Their payments are... You know, we're on time with payments.

And, basically, all of these contracts with the exception of the Go Hawaii app contract ends, December of this year. We are in active procurement for the North America, market, and we will be issuing out an RFP for the island destination brand marketing and management services, really soon. In regards to the global support services, all of those activities, we are examining this contract and looking to see what projects we can bring in house, and this is for efficiencies. And the global meetings, conventions, and MCI contract... Sorry.

Global meetings, conventions, and incentives or MCI, that contract, it has been awarded for, which... And it will start 01/01/2027, and we are currently in contract negotiations with them. So in a nutshell, this is an update of the contracts that are with the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau. The next contract is with Hawaiian Council, and then we are doing work with them under the Kilohana Collective. And I'd like to recognize Carmela.

I saw her in the back. She is the director of destination stewardship and, has been working with our team. Kilohana is also a very great, contractor. They're a great partner and have been helping us to execute our programs. So under the Kilo Hana or Hawaiian Council contract, this is one contract that consists or consisted of six projects.

Some of these projects or programs, have ended. So if I could just share out with you what this contract was about. Again, it supports services for destination stewardship, and there were six programs under that. So the first one is, our technical assistance and capacity building program. Underneath that, we have the foundational technical assistance and community tourism collaboratives.

These, two programs are currently being executed. Community tourism collaborative is happening on Maui and the foundational technical assistance program. These are... You can think of these as workshops, will occur on the islands of Maui, Hawaii Island, Oahu, and Kauai. And the whole point of this program is to help small businesses or those that are interested in getting into the visitor industry, providing them that support and guidance.

The next, area is administration of HTA's community programs. And so, Kilohana had built a platform, an online platform called, and that's where people could submit their proposals through. So currently... Well, actually, under this this current contract, this has ended as of June 2026. But underneath that area, we had the programs of community enrichment, Kukula Ola, signature events, sports, and Kahulaina.

And again, these are the programs, 20 programs that bridge resident visitor interaction and help support, community organizations. The next, area or program is a visitor education and post arrival program. And again, this, this program ended in June of this year. And the whole point of this was, again, to reach visitors while they're on island, sharing out messages about what there is to see and do while they're here, visitor safety messaging, and travel responsibly, respectfully. There was airport ads.

There were... They developed a programming called travel eight zero eight that is on YouTube. You can find it on YouTube and also social media posts. The next area or project that was under this contract was, development of curriculum for tourism got... Tourism...

Sorry. Tourism guide certification. Tour guide, sorry, tour guide certification, and that project was complete. The other project area, we called it smart tourism, but basically, this was a report that, helped to drive, you know, how the Gojoi app is enhanced. So that was a important study that was done.

And lastly, the last project under this contract was our tourism quality assurance program, otherwise known as curator. So, through Kilohana, they, helped to develop this program and execute it. And so those were the three... Sorry, the six projects that were under this contract. And currently, what's still ongoing right now, and this contract ends at the end of January are the technical assistance and capacity building program and the administration of HTA's...

Sorry, HTA's community programs. Do you have any questions regarding this? And, again, for this contract, invoices are paid on time. The staff meets with them at least twice a month and as needed. And I think the working relationship is is really good, especially with our senior brand manager, Didi Hawa, who oversees this contract and the Zien Sandford, who, oversees the technical assistance and capacity building program.

Members, any questions? We'll move online. Any questions online?

Okay. I think

No. No. Yeah. Okay. I think you're in the clear for this one.

So let's move on to next one. In case on time because, you know, let's go to the CEO search update.

I'll turn it over to David.

Okay. We're in the final phase here. So, October 30, applications close for the CEO. And then, the selection committee will review the applicants and schedule interviews to come to their finalists. I don't...

I'm not sure if it's gonna be the last two or three. They'll take those names to the board in December. And December, the board will interview these finalists. And I understand it has to be in a public hearing. And then they'll make a final decision and turn that name over to the governor.

The governor then makes a final decision and then submits it back to the legislature. Correct?

Yeah. For the Senate confirmation there.

So that... That's the status.

Okay. So I'll turn it over to you if the application deadline closes. When do you think we will have the public meeting for the board?

In December. I don't know if we're gonna schedule a special. We have a scheduled board meeting that month, but I don't know if we're gonna have a special session for the interview process.

Could you give us, like, kinda like, just some... A summary of the insights of what we're looking for in a CEO?

You're looking for somebody that has some governmental background and knowledge, as well as industry, if possible. We want to make sure that they're open and communicating with both the legislature and the, industry partners. So those were some of the high points when we rewrote the job description.

And, you know, the application that I closed before, is there any reason why we decided to reopen it and extend it?

Yeah. So it's been a long process. We we went with the original, Bishop Company lists. Yeah. We went through all of that.

We actually met with DBEDHR and DHERD to get some clarification. So the position change from a board hiring the president and CEO to the president and CEO being a state employee and the benefits and everything changed. So that created some a little bit of a hiccup that we needed to get through to make sure that the hire is is solid.

And where... And you said they were weighing visitor experience and government agency experience relationships. Does... Do we lean heavily on one side or the other when searching or is it balanced?

I think it's balanced. But one of the things that was brought up when we we met with, Ebed is that this position could have been considered by another state employee. Understanding that the new makeup of the position is as a state employee. So their recommendation was to reopen the application process because there may have been somebody out there that would have considered the position that didn't come... Consider it in the first go around.

Yeah. The reason why I asked this because, you know, I think in the past, we were trying to lean heavily for a CEO that has a lot of visitor experience, and not much government experience. And I think that was kind of the issues of what happened because, you know, we have a... We have an advisory report now that's supposed to guide the CEO.

And we lean too heavily on someone with too much visitor experience and not enough government agency management experience, then we run into the problems that we've had in the past with previous CEOs.

So, Senator, do you have any questions? Any questions?

Quick question. David, when you guys, when you're talking about the finalists, how many people would be those finalists before it goes on to the governor?

It's either two or three. The Selection Committee will make that final decision.

As of now, because I know you said the application closes October 30. Do you have a number of how many people applied for the CEO position?

Oh, from the very beginning, we had something like 68 applicants altogether and narrowed it down. They went through a interview of eight and then they went to the board and made a recommendation to open the application process up again. Yeah.

Okay, got it. Thank you. Thank you, Chair.

And just to clarify, so you said earlier, so the board's going to send two or three names to the governor or the board will send one name to the governor?

Yeah, you're right. Corrected me. The Selection Committee will send two or three names to the board. And the board will then interview and make a final recommendation with a name to the governor.

Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you. Any other question? Alright. Let's move on to our next item. Which is destination management action plan.

Okay? So, I will skip our resident sentiment update since I already covered it, and sorry for not explaining it better because I was, yeah. So, I will just jump to our hot spot, management update.

So just a reminder, our destination management plans were just approved in Q2 of this year, and the team, our destination managers, it consists of five, one for each island with Maui and Lanai belonging to one destination manager. The team has been working on the planning of, you know, implementation of these actions. So, again, our destination management action plans focus on hot spot management.

Again, narrowing down on what this plan is about, and we took into consideration, you know, the legislative audit that happened last year, so following their recommendations.

So with that, sorry, I also wanted to mention that the destination managers, they work closely with our planner and myself. They have developed work plans for each of the action plans. They have created monthly trackers to make sure that we stay on track, and they're currently developing their first progress report. Again, as, we're following the auditor's recommendation, so making sure that we have active reporting on what is happening for each of the DMAPs.

So the first year of the DMAP is really spent on, planning, getting together, you know, committees, community meetings, meeting with state and county officials to address the various hotspots.

And, again, to share out, you know, when developing or going through what is a hotspot, we reached out to community. We held in person community meetings as well as meetings online, and we also, implemented as online survey where community feedback from both residents, our visitor industry businesses could submit, you know, you know, what they think are pinpoints, areas of concerns, etcetera. So, there was a process in identifying, you know, what are hot spots.

We looked at what are the highest priorities of hot spots on each island and also discussed with the advisory groups for each of the destination management action plans, you know, where would they they like to see areas addressed. So looking at natural, cultural, and community resource impacts, safety, access, infrastructure challenges, and where are...

What actions could HTA take in addressing these, hot spots? I'm just gonna quickly go through each island and what is happening, with their DMAP. So, for the island of Kauai, we'll start from the top of the chain, there are three hotspots identified, the Kapa'a Wailua Corridor, Ho'opi'i Falls, and Koke'e and Waimea Canyon. With, in a nutshell, what you need to know about what's happening on...

with this, DMAP is the Destination Manager, Patti Ornellas, is currently working with the county as well as community in addressing the Kapa'a Wailua Corridor. And for this, for this hot spot, what they're looking, what we seek to do is to develop a mobility hub, to get people using alternative modes of transportation, through this area to alleviate, congestion. Also looking at, implementing wayfinding as well as marketing and also developing a website, again, to share out with visitors about this area and looking at, working with community, a community organization to help, facilitate this.

With regards to Ho'opi'i Falls, Patti is working with both county, state agencies, as well as community to convene meetings again, to address, the impact with, you know, visitors, going through Ho'opi'i Falls and that area because that area, if you were to go, if you go there, you will notice that when it's very populated and there's a lot of cars, it does create tension for the residents who live there. And lastly, Koke'e and Waimea Canyon. Right now, we're working with DLNR, for this.

What we'd like to do is, monitor this area and do a count of how many visitors are coming here to just get better data to then determine what should be done to alleviate or make for better visitor experience at the Koke'e, Waimea Canyon.

So that is Kauai's DMAP. The next DMAP is Oahu, and the priority hotspots are the North Shore Corridor, Ka'iwa Ridge, otherwise known as, Lanikai Pillbox, and Pu'u o Hulu Kai or Ma'ili Pillbox. The Destination Manager, Blane Andrade, has been working with community and businesses on the North Shore Corridor to see, and it's, I should also mention the county to see what can be done to alleviate the congestion there.

So, he's been actively attending meetings and meeting with industry and community to see how can we, support efforts.

With Ka'iwa Ridge and Pu'u o Hulu Kai, again, these are both under DLNR's jurisdiction, so he also has been working with them to see what can we do to help support alleviating strain on these two resources. The next DMAP is Maui, and the priority hotspots here are Hana Highway, the Road to Hana, and Honolua Bay and Lipoa Point. We also identified in this, in this DMAP called Poll, is also a site that we're trying to prevent it from getting to be, more impact...

Getting it to be, sorry, preventing it or being proactive in addressing issues there. And so Meagan DeGaia is the Destination Manager from Maui and Lanai.

So she has been actively working again with the county officials and community and is beginning to set up meetings again to address the issues at Hana Highway and also at Honolua Bay and Lipio Point with, sorry, Lipoa Point with community and, as well as DLNR. For the island of Molokai, the priority hotspot here is Halawa Valley and Moa'ula Falls. Because of this, what happened with the storm, the recent storms, this area...

Or the destination manager for Molokai, Kui Adolpho, we're putting this on hold so that the community has time to, you know, to heal from what has happened.

And so Kui's efforts are now placed on developing a Molokai visitor industry database as well as working on creating and updating responsible travel content and messaging to visitors. Moving on to the Lanai Destination Management Action Plan. Again, Megan DeGaia is the Destination Manager for this, for this plan. So, for Lanai, actually, what they'd like to do is there's no hot spots on this island really.

What they wanna do is to have visitors when they come from, you know, the boat tours to come into town.

So, looking at developing a hop off, hop on hop off shuttle from the pier to Lanai City. We're also looking at working; we're also looking at having a coordinator on the island to help facilitate the development of this, of this shuttle system as well. And lastly, for Hawaii Island, the Destination Manager for this island is Matt Sueda, and he has also been actively working with the county as well as DLNR for these three, for these two hotspots, Keaukaha and Kealakekua Bay.

Another hot spot that was identified, and is under DHHL's, jurisdiction is Ka Lae or Southpoint. And so, again, all of our designation managers are really working hard on developing, planning efforts and, you know, organizing meetings to address these actions. And, and I should just mention that for fiscal year '27, out of HTA's budget, approximately 1.2 million is going to hotspot management. That's all that I have for this area. Any questions?

Members, any questions right now?

Senator, go ahead.

So, Carol, you know, the 1.2 million to address the hotspot areas. How are you, how are you factoring that up amongst all the islands? If the Lanai is wanting to do this hop on hop off? Kauai has their priorities. Is that what you're gonna be used to help them do that?

Yeah. So, working with our destination managers, we created, you know, the three-year plan with budget. And so, I'm sorry.

I did not put that in the presentation, but I'd be more than happy to meet with you to share out with you that work plan and the budget for each year and for each DMAP. And we're also looking at, you know, partnering with the other state and county agencies. So, hoping to leverage, each other's resources, to address the hot spots. And I know for the green fee, we've also put in some proposals to, you know, address some of the actions in the DMAPS as well.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you. My question is, you know, you're talking about these progress reports, and they're being in the process right now being completed?

Yeah. Because we just finished the first quarter. And so they're recapping everything.

And, when do you think they'll be completed by?

So, by the, hopefully, by the end of this month because July, August, September. Right? And so, they need a month time, and then we can turn that around to you.

And you're actively working with the right stakeholders to ensure that things are happening? Because I know that you mentioned MOUs. You know, just with an MOU, though, it's just like a piece of paper that's something written. But are you guys, are we doing anything to ensure that there's actionable, tangible results coming out of this?

Yes. So, yeah, we're we're developing MOUs. And then when we created the DMAPS, right, for each partner, like, county or state agency, we took the plan to them and, you know, we wanted to make sure that they could help us move these actions forward. So they all verbally agreed that they could. And so, you know, with that and creating these MOUs, then, you know, we're hoping that we can continue to move these action plans forward.

Because these DMAPS not only benefit the state, it benefits their island as well.

And, you know, when we have these community meetings, like, destination hotspots, are we also meeting with, like, the visitor industry, like, the hoteliers about, you know, what are their visitors saying, where their visitors are going?

So, when we did the planning process, yeah, it was, It's open to the public. So, I know that from the one, from the meetings that I was there, I was there for majority of them. There were both residents.

I mean, both our visitor industry are residents. Right? So, there were, I did recognize people from our visitor industry at these meetings. And it was also done online too.

We did online surveys, so, you know, people could also provide their input that way too.

Carmela, I just wanna single you out a little bit. I know this is about North Shore. And I know Keelahana ran a direct bus, a shuttle to North Shore. Could you give us, like, an update on that?

Sure the...supposed to be until the end of September has been extended to the end of the year, for the shuttle running from Waikiki, and then the one at Colinas ending, end of this month or end of last month. I can't quite remember, but it will continue to the end of the year for the Waikiki shuttle.

And how much is it for someone to wanna go?

Up until, I wanna say, end of September, October...not remembering. It was $5, and I believe it increased marginally to under 20, going from like...

Like $20. That's a huge jump from $5 to 20.

I, it might be 12. I don't know of but...

10.

10? Okay. Yeah. Thank you.

Okay. Yeah. Because one of the things that I think HTA should look into doing is doing, working with the county of Oahu to create a direct bus route because I don't know how the profitable that is to run a shuttle. Right?

Unless you wanna eat the cost up for our own mental sake. But is that something that HTA could work with is a direct bus route from Waikiki to Haleiwa or the North Shore? Because right now, there is not. They have to transfer somewhere.

Yeah. I recall you mentioning that in one of our other meetings. And I had then told our, Destination Manager, Blane Andrade. So let me follow-up with him. But, yes, that was a good idea.

Members, any other questions? Thank you, Caroline. Thank you Carmela.

Thanks. And I will turn it over to Talon.

Alright. Let's talk about the roof.

Alright. That's for last. I'm only the messenger by the way. No, no I'm not. Alright. So good morning, Chair DeCoite, Chair Tam, Senator Fukunaga, and Rep Gedeon.

Thank you for your time this morning. Today, I'll be going over the Hawaii Convention Center updates. There are two main topics I'll be covering today. So, of course, the rooftop terrace deck repair project and then some other repair and maintenance projects going on at the convention center right now. So, rooftop terrace deck project.

So, the first, topic is, or the first slide is the executive summary that, just to provide a high-level financial snapshot of where we're at right now. So, I pulled the, this report from RLB's Rider Levett Bucknall's, executive monthly report. They are the project manager for this project.

So as you can see here, to date, we've committed $94,018,373. So that committed amount includes both what's been encumbered and paid. So, we haven't necessarily used up that full $94,000,000. That's just what's committed to date. And then the budget is, of course, $108,670,000, and we have a unused fund balance of $14,652,882.

And I do wanna point out that nice 0 on the contingency line as of, as of July 31. The next slide, of course, is now the project update. So, I'm just gonna give a little background information on where we are with the project. So currently, HTA has been receiving various time impact analysis reports. To date, we received six reports from May until August 2026.

And during this time, we've been reviewing all of these reports with help from Rider Levett Bucknall, the project manager, ABB, that's the engineer, and then, of course, DAGS. And then as a team, they have recommended to reject all six of these time impact analysis reports based off of either insufficient information or just some things don't necessarily align. And so we rejected these reports, and these reports also include requests for time extensions and then, cost increases.

But Swinerton Builders, the general contractor for the project, they said, wait. wait, wait.

We'd like to present this information to the whole group again. So, we just had a meeting yesterday to review all of their claims for the project. And so right now, they brought up two main points in the TIA's, the permit delays and procurement delays and then unforeseen conditions during the demolition process. So, as they're tearing open the roof, they're seeing things that weren't documented in the original engineer drawings or things just aren't what, was originally, yeah, planned out.

So based off of those two main factors, the permit delays and the unforeseen conditions, we are expecting certain time extensions and potential cost increases. So there are three main questions that we must answer right now. So what's the project timeline? What's the causation? Who caused what and why?

And then lastly, of course, the financial impacts to the project. And the goal is to have all of these three questions by, update that by the end of the month, so end of October. And that about summarizes the project update, but I'm happy to answer any questions.

What were the unforeseen conditions?

Sure. So I'll show one picture later on, but the main unforeseen condition is the, the sloping in the roof. So, you know, I think the number was, like, four-inch slope in the roof. Now four inches on that whole roof, you would probably call that flat. Right?

But then for an engineer, four inches, just a little off can make a very big difference when you're laying down the concrete or you're trying to put up the new pillars for the support, all this, all that type of stuff. So, the, what was in the original drawings for the sloping isn't actually what's on the field.

So right now, as they're uncovering all of this, they're realizing that now they need on field inspections to reanalyze the sloping and that, of course, is gonna add some time delays. They're gonna have to recalculate things and then change the plans on the field on the go.

So that's what's causing these delays from the unforeseen conditions. And sorry, that's like the layman's explanation. So, yeah. Thank you.

So why weren't they spotted in the original contract? In the original's, analysis?

So, during the analysis process, of course, there were samples taking place. So, whether it's drilling or whatever, I don't know exactly, but, you know, they did analyze the project. They did samples, but you don't have the full picture, the actual picture until you actually demolish the construction site. So, as they're ripping off the roof, they're getting the full picture. And because of that, yeah, there are some project delays.

For the current project?

Who did we ask to do the original analysis, like, of the, who did we ask to?

Yeah.

Okay. So the engineers is Allana Buick & Bers or ABB.

So we're saying that Allana Bers could not have seen this at all?

Take my answer with a grain of salt, but it's very difficult to have a 100% picture of the existing conditions. Especially if it doesn't match the original drawings for the building.

I think that was another point they brought up too.

How did it not match the original drawings of the building?

Just like the engineering drawing say, maybe the sloping was six inches or eight inches, let's say. But, actually, it's only four inches. That that that is a very high-level example. So don't, yeah. That's not like the actual.

Is there anything in the contract that says that there is, like, repercussions for any delays? I know that there was something that was referred. That there was $10,000 a day that they have to pay.

I think it's liquidated damages you're referring to?

Yeah.

So, there are liquidated damages for the general contractor, and I believe it's $30,000 a day if we find that they are at fault for any of these delays.

So it's only if they're at fault?

Yes. I believe so. Yes. For Swinerton, Swinerton Builders.

But what about the contract? But they're, like, what about the, I forgot the name that you just...

The vendors, the other subcontractors, RLB and ABB. I do not believe they have any type of liquidated damages in their contract. Yes. Double check that to make sure, but I don't think there's any sort of clauses like that.

Before I move on, Senator, do you have any other, do you have any questions right now online?

No.

Okay. So, okay. I guess, like, my last question at least is, like, can the Convention Center open on time while these repairs continue, especially with the canopy on the roof?

That is our number 1 priority as the state. We're trying our best to keep the Convention Center open, opening on time so that they can host these events. But that is one of the things that we are analyzing at this point. And until we come up with the final answer, again, with the project timeline and all that, we can't, yeah, I can't give a solid answer on that yet.

And what are we doing to reassure them that their event can still go on as planned here in Hawaii if given delays?

Yes.

Do we have any events booked right now on the books for when the Convention Center opens?

So we did speak with the HCC and the HVCB team about the project, and we are actively looking at all of the solutions right now. But until we come up with the final timeline, we don't necessarily wanna go into any of the details.

Yes.

And you're thinking the final timeline will come out in November?

End of October.

End of October to early November.

Okay. So, let's say that there are cost overruns. You're, are, Is that gonna come out of the contingency fund?

Yes. So right now, we budgeted $11,900,000 for the contingencies. And based off of all of the potential change impact reports that we've been receiving from RLB, we're nowhere near that $11,000,000 figure even with the TIAs, as of today.

So with the delays and the unforeseen issues, that $11,000,900.518 should be or would be enough?

I expect it to be enough, as of today.

Members, any other questions before we continue?