A new plan for tourism on the Big Island highlights the potential for using sustainable tourism to preserve and improve resource management on the island.
The Hawaii Tourism Authority released an Island of Hawaii Destination Management Action Plan on Wednesday, developed in partnership with Hawaii County and the Hawaii Island Visitors Bureau. , for the next two years, espousing the virtues of “regenerative tourism”.
“Regenerative tourism takes sustainability one step further and focuses on the net benefit to the economy of visitors to a destination, looking at the social and cultural benefits,” the plan says, listing a series of actions that agencies county and state and the private sector can take to achieve these goals.
“We have a certain type of traveler who has been interested in this type of tourism for years,” said Ross Birch, executive director of IHVB. “But now it’s really up to the destinations themselves to set these things up and make them happen.”
Birch is one of 19 steering committee members who helped shape the DMAP. Other members included former Hawaii Island Chamber of Commerce chief executive Miles Yoshioka, executive director of the Imiloa Astronomy Center, Ka’iu Kimura, national park spokesperson Hawaii Volcanoes, Jessica Ferracane, and others.
The DMAP builds on HTA’s Hawaii Island Tourism Strategic Plan for 2020-2025, which also revisited the role and future of tourism for the island.
“There is no doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects were at the forefront of the minds of the steering committee and the community when developing the actions for the DMAP,” wrote Caroline Anderson, director of HTA’s community enrichment, in an email. “In the DMAP, the impacts of COVID-19 are identified not only as a threat – such as loss of jobs and impacts on the visitor industry – but also as an opportunity to have a better tourism industry that is more sustainable for the future.”
Using the strategic plan as a baseline and taking into account visitor and resident feedback, the destination plan lists 10 multi-step actions that agencies including HTA, the Department of Lands and Natural Resources, the IHVB, the county and the private sector perform over the next few years.
These actions include ways to protect culturally significant places, develop programs to perpetuate authentic Hawaiian culture, promote environmental conservation practices among visitors and community members, promote the agritourism on the island, invest in community programs and infrastructure, and improve enforcement of vacation rental policies.
Each of these elements is expected to be completed by the end of 2023, Anderson wrote.
“I really hope the communities here get on board for this,” Birch said. “The state, HTA and county are important, but the communities – it’s really the people who will make this happen.”
The plan also lists a series of places on the island that are considered “tourism hotspots” or areas that attract visitors to an unsustainable degree, such as Waipio Valley, Kahalu’u Bay, the green sand beach of Papakolea and more.
“The Visitors Bureau has avoided promoting these locations to visitors because they are not set up for this type of traffic,” Birch said. “From a visitor bureau perspective, we would love to be able to recommend these places to people, but we need new management practices to make these places sustainable.”
Email Michael Brestovansky at mbrestovansky@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
