Peter Apo: Another Model for Community Tourism in Hawaii

The Hawaii Tourism Authority’s new leadership team, led by John De Fries, has dramatically raised the bar in dealing with public opposition to Hawaii’s longstanding visitor industry model.

The dramatic drop in visitor numbers over the 2020-2021 period caused by the Covid-19 crisis provided HTA with the opportunity to hit the reset button, which has become a stifling, purse-driven industry, according to many residents, from which it seems to be of no relief to Hawaii‘s people.

Recently, HTA hosted its first online public review of progress in Destination Management Action Plans (DMAPS) development for Kauai, Oahu, Island of Hawaii, and Maui Nui (Maui, Molokai, Lanai). HTA’s planning model extends to each of the Hawaiian provinces and their respective visitor offices in a partnership that gives each island the opportunity to shape its own tourism destiny.

I assume that an important HTA goal is to give each goal the ability to create their own bottom-up, not top-down, DMAP.

HTA’s 2020-2025 Strategic Plan states that “Destination Management involves attracting and educating responsible visitors; Advocating solutions to overcrowded attractions, congested infrastructure and other tourism-related problems; and working with other responsible agencies to improve natural and cultural assets that are valued by both residents and visitors to Hawaii. “

I believe HTA is on the right track with the DMAP initiative that is specific to each island – and hopefully it will eventually evolve to a level that can be applied to the individual communities on each island.

Definition of community-based tourism

The HTA website describes the Destination Management Action Planning Initiative as a community-based tourism program. It is important to note that the word “parish” can be used to refer to an entire island, a geopolitical subdivision of the island, or a city anywhere on the island. I would define community as cities like Waianae, Kailua, Kapolei, Kaneohe, Haleiwa, Lahaina, Hanalei, Wailuku and so on.

Community-based tourism is on a smaller scale that springs directly from a community, which firstly decides to what extent it is willing – if at all – to share with tourists, and secondly, on what terms.

Community-based tourism should not be imposed from the outside. Hawaii has a love-hate relationship with tourism because the business model that hovers like a long shadow over the islands is too often successful in a seemingly unequal exchange of values ​​at the expense of the places and people it touches.

Community-based tourism is a mix of experiences created and pursued by local, traditional or indigenous peoples to improve their quality of life. It also seeks to protect and restore their environmental and cultural assets and involve visitors on the terms defined by the community.

The business model often includes walking tours, cultural performances, dining, window displays, recreational programs, craft cooperatives, nature and wildlife walks, lectures on local culture and history, storytelling, and healing and health services. It encompasses almost every aspect of community-oriented experiences made by the people who live there that add value to the experience.

The nature of community-based tourism sets limits and limits on how many visitors can be accommodated so that the sense of place is not overwhelmed and the relationship between the local population and the number of visitors remains in balance.

For Hawaii, community-based tourism would be a more sustainable business model. Large-scale tourism models, which are mostly driven from outside the target community by third-party providers in the industry, often result in a community creating more problems than it solves.

Some of the Hawaiian experiences have been particularly detrimental to a community’s culture, traditions and customs, and its sense of place. Community-based tourism is about creating a more direct connection between the place, the people who live there and the visitor.

Community tourism invites far more intimacy between host and guest than other tourism business models offer. It offers the guest a far more authentic activity as it is an activity that exists for its own sake and is not specifically designed to entertain a stranger. It’s more about a community sharing their true culture than third-party entertainment.

The Ho’okau-like triangle

George Kanahele was a great Hawaiian visionary and my mentor. He and another Hawaiian visionary, Kenny Brown, founded the Native Hawaiian Hospitality Association (NaHHA) before there was an HTA.

NaHHA plays a central role in today’s tourism dialogue. While running NaHHA, George developed a tourism management concept which he defined as the Guest-Host-Place model. The guest means the visitor. The hosts are the people who live on site. The place is the goal.

Community-based tourism is about creating a more direct connection between the place, the people who live there and the visitor.

George graphically expressed his guest-host-location model as an equilateral triangle. The three points are marked alternately with guest, host and location. In the middle of the triangle, the word Ho’okaulike, which means “balance evenly”, is printed in bold.

His model stipulates that the “benefits” of the tourism experience must be evenly distributed to each point of the triangle – the visitor, the people living there and the place visited.

Incidentally, the word “benefits” is not limited to the almighty dollar. Visitor behavior is one of a number of important variables that can be played out as a benefit or a curse – just like the impact on the environment. HTA already has a long list. It would be interesting to see if a power distribution diagram could actually be designed to bring George’s Ho’okaulike model to life.

Connect the past with the future

Community-based tourism is a community that celebrates its own greatness and invites strangers to join the celebration. It’s not just about heritage preservation, it’s also about heritage development.

It does not have to freeze landscapes or cultural practices and traditions. It’s about honoring the past and connecting it to the future in a dynamic evolution of the local people’s culture of living – celebrating where they came from, defining who they are and developing new dreams that they will bring to the future bring.

Ultimately, community tourism is about preserving the dignity of a people willing to open their hearts to strangers from other places. Imua.