 Hi everybody. Hi, I'm Chris Lethem and this is another episode of The Economy and You at here at Think Tech Hawaii. And you know, one of the issues folks that we're going to talk today about is sustainable tourism, as opposed to economic tourism or what we call ecotourism. Our guest today is Dr. Linda Cox. She is from the University of Hawaii, our very own, and she's a professor with the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management. Did I get that right? Yeah, well, welcome to the show. Thanks for coming on today, Linda. My pleasure to be here. Yeah. So, you know, we're just going to have a little chit chat and talk about sort of the sort of the weird, wonderful things that you all are doing to promote sustainable tourism here in Hawaii. And but I'd like to kind of find out from you, how did this sort of come about and how did you gain an interest in it? Well, I'm very interested in community-based economic development. I'm a community-based economic development specialist. And I think that we have a situation that we built in Hawaii from the 70s and 80s, where we developed a very large mass tourism engine. And what we really need to do, given the change in our modern travelers, where they want to do things besides just staying Waikiki, they really want to come into our communities. And this is very challenging for our communities because they may be very small, unsophisticated. And in order to really take advantage of things, rather than have the bus go there, they get off, they do one thing, they get back on the bus and go back to Waikiki, we want to make sure that the visitor has a quality experience and also the people in the community actually benefit from this. Yeah. And this is very important. Because a lot of times nowadays, we get this notion of well, it's just better to leave those turries in Waikiki and not bring them into our community. The reality is visitors are changing. They want a very unique experience. And they're very interested in our communities. Well, they've done Waikiki. I mean, you know, everybody loves Waikiki, but if you've done Waikiki, you've done Waikiki. And, you know, there's sort of people moving out to the neighbor islands and to the rural areas there. We're doing lots of really creative things, you know. We are. We are. We're doing everything. We're growing cocoa now. We're doing more with growing grapes to make wines. And, you know, this is, I don't know if you call this ag tourism, but certainly- I do call it ag tourism. So we have all these things, sort of weird, wonderful things that we're doing and we're diversifying our economy in interesting ways. It seems like there's these sort of spurts and starts and things that we're sort of trying to get going. And some of them will last sustain and some of them won't, I guess. And we also have challenges as we do this. Because as you have a visitor, you're welking and mean them into your home, but you also have to kind of set a little bit of standard of how we're supposed to behave in our home. That's right. So this is very important and it's very challenging for our rural communities when they're not sophisticated. These visitors get in their vehicles and start driving around. Just driving around is difficult because the maps and the signs and what is the name of this road and it's very confusing. It is. And you don't want them in our sacred places. And we're also facing some additional challenges as social media starts to take off because they can get a lot of information that may not necessarily be the information that we really want to have. So this becomes very, very challenging. Well, you know, when we talk about sustainable tourism and you're saying this is sort of, you know, you said this is the start of a couple of decades ago or maybe back in the 80s. Ecotourism became popular in the 70s. In the 70s. In Hawaii in 1994, the Hawaii Ecotourism Association was formed by a group of concerned individuals who want to help protect our resources because as you see this traveler becomes more independent, they kind of just go everywhere. And so we need to protect our resources. We simply cannot be having eight, nine million visitors getting off planes and thinking we're not going to have an impact if we don't make a concerted effort to be clear about what it is we're trying to do here. Well, you know, if you hike on trails, for example, I would say trails is probably an obvious example because I know the trails that I have walked, raising two daughters here. We've used these trails throughout and the trails have changed. The layout has changed and we've had to make accommodations. Of course, things happen. Trees fall down, rocks fall down. Where people are walking back and forth, you have more erosion. We have to go back and work on the trails to rebuild the paths so that, you know, they're usable. Bridges go out. These are parts, part of that is sort of a natural occurrence sometimes though it happens because, you know, the usage, the amount of usage that we get, but of course, you know. And it can get worse. As you get more and more visitors, they're wanting more and more of this authentic experience. So they're going to be going on these trails. They're going to be going into our marine environments. And what we really want is to really develop and promulgate best practices so that everyone involved in this is trying to minimize this impact and helping the guests do their best job. And there's also, to me, there's sort of a leveraging of our resources. I mean, we're using our resources also to bring visitors to Hawaii. Yes, we are. We want to protect them. We want to protect them because we want to keep having those to leverage. Yes. A worn-out resource is not going to produce much. Yeah, it doesn't. All right, yeah. And so we do have to invest money back into those natural resources to keep those there. So I became involved with the Hawaii Ecotourism Association around the turn of the century. And one of the things that... Now, when you say that, you mean just like, you know, 15 years ago, 16 years ago, when you say turn of the century. It was the turn of the century, wasn't it? Were we worried about Y2K and others? I guess my thought process is that it would be turn of the century. It was a long time ago. Well, it was the turn of the century. Yes, it was. But I don't know why in the context of, oh, yes. Yeah, go ahead. So not that I'm that old. Not admitting to be that old. So what's happening is we really need to ensure that these are authentic experience and following best management practices and how do you actually do that. That's right. So that really becomes challenging. So I begin working with the Hawaii Ecotourism Association. And by the way, we are talking now sustainable tourism, because if you ask a lot of tourists about ecotourism, a lot of our tourists that come here don't know what exactly that is. And they also tend to identify sustainability as eating local food. Which is okay. That's a good step. That's a good step. When I was in the 80s, worked with agriculture. I'm delighted now that we've had an impact. But we also need to educate them about how to actually support our tour operators that use best practices. We need to educate operators about that. And we need to help residents understand how if there should be an issue that they have a feedback loop. Right. And then that's actually an interesting component is our tour operators are following safe, you know, best practices. Yes. Because if they're doing things that damage the environment, you know. Exactly. Yeah, then that is a problem for us. And how do you expect the visitor to know? They're only here for a few weeks. Yeah, they don't know. So we have really launched and I have written several grants and involved been involved with this certification program. So Hawaii Ecotourism Association now has a sustainable tourism certification program to certify operators. We did a great big push this year for the IUCN. We just had a many of our operators featured yesterday at the Hawaii Tourism Authority annual conference speaking about this. And we're hoping that together we can all raise the bar. Yeah. To do a better job every year and help our visitors who really want to support us and really want this state to remain sustainable because many of them are repeat visitors. Yes. Yes, that's right. And you know, the thing is that each of our islands has unique things to offer. Yes. And the beauty of course is when people come to Hawaii is if you just are one island, you get to experience that island. But if you go to a neighbor island, you have a whole different experience, whether you're going and through the, you know, visiting the lavender fields on Maui or you're going to the top of Haleakalada, which a morning sunrise or you're going to the big island to see the lava flows. I mean, all these are absolutely unique experiences that are all memorable. And we really do lead the world in being a top tourism destination. So I think it's only fitting that we're one of the only two states in the nation that actually has their own certification program. We're very unique. It's we have spent three or four years really fine tuning it. It is our idea that we're going to keep raising the bar and we'll be working with Hawaii Tourism Authority and trying to educate visitors about the importance of supporting those certified operators. And then also linking them. We're just going to launch a new website soon that will link them to hotels and restaurants and other businesses that also promulgate best management practices. And let me throw my hat in the ring if you need somebody to develop the website for it. Yeah, I mean, we really, it's very important. Yes it is. And so with our new travel planner and also to be perfectly honest, we also have a situation with some independent travelers who sometimes may be doing things that maybe is not exactly a best practice. Well, and sometimes they do things that are just out and out dangerous for themselves. Well, yes, they do. And that's a big challenge because particularly with our younger people, they don't maybe have the resources to pay for an expensive tour as they see it. So we're also working to educate these independent travelers. And I think we have seen some issues with hikers falling off of mountains and people getting swept away in streams. Yeah. So these are very important things because nobody wants to come on vacation and have a tragedy. Yes. And so that's another thing we're also working to do is really help educate people about what are the best practices even for an independent traveler. Yeah. And this is very, very important. We also need to avoid greenwashing where people say they're sustainable but they're really not. So we actually are a third party certification. We inspect all of our operators. We have an extensive evaluation checklist. So it's not a minimal effort. We're very proud of it. We're also kind of co-partning with a white green business program, which is really more of a building thing, which is much easier actually to do. Much easier to certify a building because you can measure things. Right. Well it's quantifiable. Yeah. There's water flow and electrical and there's a benefit economically to the owner of the building being more sustainable. So this has been a very long road. However, we think we maybe have reached a tipping point. Okay. And we think it's really starting to take off. The website will be launched soon and we're really getting a lot more operators. We're getting a lot more interest among visitors to actually go with our certified operators. And I think it's very important that we understand that sustainability is going to be a very long journey. It's not a guided tool. Well, yeah. And it's a, you know, it really is a journey because, you know, what people like to do today and what people want to do 10 years from now, maybe something different or unique. You know, there may be things that we develop as we're, you know, technology of course is changing the world that we live in. We now have these sort of weird and wonderful devices that allow you to sort of ride up on top of the water and shoot up in the air and all these sort of weird things that we can do now. And so the, you know. Also global climate change. Global climate change. Well, you know, even that, I mean, if the water, if the, if the sea level rises, that is going to have a huge impact in Hawaii. I don't know that we've even begun to address the challenges that we're going to face if the sea level rises by a couple feet. No. So this is another area that if you have a well-connected network of people very interested in best management practices, not only can we reduce some of our impact that's coming from this state, but also be better prepared by being able to communicate better and understand what our goal is and all be moving forward in the same road rather than someone going off in different directions. So we're going to take a quick commercial break. We have a one-minute break and we're going to be right back. I'm Chris Leitham here with the Economy U and you and stay tuned and we'll be back with more. Thank you. I'm Richard Emery. I'm with co-host Jane Sugimura of Kondo Insider, Hawaii's weekly show about association living. The purpose of these videos is to educate board members and condo residents about issues relating to association living. We hope they're helpful and that they assist in resolving problems that affect the relationship between boards and their residents. Each week Thursday at 3 p.m. we bring you exciting guests, industry experts, who for free will share their advice about how to make your association a better place to live and answer a lot of very interesting questions. Aloha. We hope you'll tune in. And yes, we're back again. Hi, I'm Chris Leitham with the Economy U here at Think Tech, Hawaii. Today's guest is Linda Cox from the University of Hawaii. Linda is with the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management with the University of Hawaii. And so we are talking about ecotourism, sustainable tourism. Now, so we've sort of had a nice discussion about this. So let's talk about maybe what are the goals going forward. Right. So what we're really trying to do is really get more people to buy into all this. What we have now... But when you say people, when you say people, okay, you're talking about individuals or you're talking about organizations like JTB and HIS that sort of steer, because a lot of these tourist companies store steer people. Yeah, everything. JTB is one of our corporate sponsors. So we work with them. Japan has a slightly different definition of ecotourism. They tend to want to give it a certification to a particular guide. We give it to a company. So we are working with them. They've been a corporate sponsor of ours for two years. I organize events for people that come over so that they can understand how to actually incorporate our certified operators into their activities. We meet with them regularly. So we have already kind of recruited them to be on board with us. We are also now working with Hawaii Tourism Authority to actually have a page on the Go Hawaii website so that visitors are educated. We also do outreach to communities so that our residents understand how important it is to support certification and for their friends and themselves if they want to go on a tour. These are our best management practices that are being followed by this group so that they can also support. The other thing is it provides a way if they have a concern or something comes up. For example, we're having a lot of discussion recently about swimming with dolphins and mantis. I was going to go to that because we used to do that when my daughters were little and we were like we would go out to the beach. I don't want to say which beach but we would go out to the beach. We would go out maybe 150-200 yards out and early in the morning and just sort of lay there and the dolphins would swim through us. Quietly, we would lay there quietly and the dolphins would swim through us. We did that just before there was anybody doing it as a tour. We just did that as something my daughter did canoe paddling and they would come in and race the canoes at six in the morning and she would see them and they would act like they were having a big race with the canoe. But now there's so many people and it's getting exploited so when these controversies come up we will be involved. We will try to be listening to residents. We will try to keep tour operators in the loop and then if there's a new regulation then we want to make sure that all of our tour operators are immediately flipped over so that no one is not following that new best planning practice. Because we don't really want to do something that sort of says okay we're not going to do that anymore because then that asset or that that is not there to us anymore. What we need to do is we need to have some sort of control mechanism. Yes. The dolphins are getting asleep because that's their sleep time. Yes. Right. So our certified tour operators work with us. We connect them to discussions and then for them they're happy because we all are on the same page so if everybody's doing it the right thing then the whole bar goes up and that's really our mission. Right. With these things. Right. And it's very important and also the visitors can feel comfortable that if someone says they're sustainable they are. Yeah. And they have contributed because you know in the old days here in Hawaii it was all about relationships but with the modern economy we've reduced things to transactions so in order to back that up and still honor the culture and honor our natural environment which are not about transactions but about relationships that those relationships are managed properly and that is a big undertaking. So we see ourselves continuing down this road with the people of the state and our visitors the businesses our corporate sponsors of which we have many. Yes. And we just want to see ourselves joining together and working to make everything better. Now my question is I'm going to play devil's advocate okay are we creating a scenario though where there's not going to be opportunity for young startups and young entrepreneurs to be able to enter into this marketplace are we going to create because you know this state is all about creating barriers to entry. Huge problem with this thing. This certification is very low cost currently it's only two hundred dollars a year or a year or two hundred dollars for a two year certification. At the same time we also engage in training. So if you get started with us and there's a little bit of an issue then we give you six months and we give you a complete detailed list. We are now working on training programs because there is no really way for people to get some of these guide trainings and cultural trainings tailored to what we need for this type of business. Okay. It's very difficult when you're on some of these remote locations. So we are now planning with people that do this type of work you know I write the grant. Some people are doing zip lines and some people are doing horseback riding in the trails and other places. We're going to make room for everybody. And that's what's the beauty of this program however it's also one of the things that slows us down a little bit to find a way to make room for everybody like I'm into agricultural tourism. So we have revised our standards to include agricultural tours. Now when you talk about agriculture tourists are you talking about taking people out to the various farms? A lot of our farms have tours. Okay. We have tours of processing facilities like coffee roasters that sort of thing. So yeah so we can all drink coffee while we're on our tour that's great. Well and again for us it's all about joining together. All these niche types of tourism are small and we need to all work together and we also need work with the groups that are more involved in mass tourism that have these large hotel infrastructures. And our hotel infrastructure is diversified too because we have Haseko which is building out in the Kapolei area. But we all need to be able to help each other because even though they may be at a large hotel that doesn't mean they don't want to engage in an ecotour experience. So we do concierge outreach. We try to educate the concierge to understand so they can explain to the visitor why this certification program is important and it's not expensive so it's not adding to the cost of the actual tour in any kind of significant sense. If you can imagine $200 in a two-year period. Well that's not so bad. No it's not so bad. The challenge of course so many things that are done by the state is they start off with well-intentioned but then they can blow up. But Hawaii ecotourism is a 501c3. So we're an educational organization. We are here to educate residents and visitors and businesses. The business sector on how to do a job that will protect the resources cultural and natural resources of the state of Hawaii. So can you give us maybe a quick example of some of the guidelines that are in place for a particular type of tour? We have regulations about their marketing. Marketing. Yes. We actually have some minimum requirements that they have to have all their permits. They have to give back to the community. They have to give back to the environment. That's our minimum requirement. We have about five of them. Then we have different areas. One of them is their marketing. They can't put up pictures like if it's a dolphin swim with thing. You have got to be very careful what you're putting on your website. Oh. You've got to present an authentic replication of what's actually going to happen. A real experience. Yes. You can't be just be posting pictures of people swimming with dolphins. That's just not what you do. Right. So we don't allow that. And we ask that you get feedback from guests. Okay. I mean there's just certain requirements we have. Then you have to behave in a certain way. For example, if you're swimming with dolphins, there's all kinds of regulations about what has to be done. All these wildlife interactions. There's many, many regulations or just strong, strong best management practices that you have to engage in. So we have five different areas and we evaluate all those five different areas. You can't be showing pictures of people rubbing sharks tummy because they like tummy rubbing and telling people you can swim with them. Right. And you're buying local food. You're using, you're not using disposable water bottles. You're using refillables or you're recycling or your facility has got, you know, low use appliances. But you're using LED lighting for example. Yeah. So we have a very extensive checklist which has been adapted from an international certification program. So we just didn't just launch off on this thing. I spent a lot of time checking out other things. We looked in similar areas. We looked at what was going on in Costa Rica, which is very similar to our environment. That's true actually. We have a lot of income. And Costa Rica got millions of millions of dollars from the state. From our state? No, from their state. Oh, from their government. To do their program. And we got very little. So we have worked very hard with a team of dedicated volunteers. We have no paid staff. No paid staff. That's like my job. Yeah. So and I help out a lot. I'm at work with Cooperative Extension Service like 4-H and those things. So this is one of the groups that I felt was very important to help. Like I help farmers. Like I help young people. I help a lot of groups as part of the land grant university. It's my job to do informal education. And so that's why I got involved in them. That's amazing. Well, you know, how would people find out more if people were interested in getting more information about the certification program? How would they reach out to you? And all they have to do is Google the Hawaii Ecotourism Association. Okay. And our website will come up. We're launching a new one in a couple of weeks. And there shouldn't be a blip. We're going to try and go with a smooth rollover. Okay. But it has all kinds of contact information. You can also Google me, Dr. Linda Cox. And my website will come up with all my information. All right. Very good. So between the two of them should be able to get a good response. Should be able to get all the data. Oh, we're on the phone or talking every day myself and the people on the board of directors of Hawaii Ecotourism Association to really try and do the best job we can to help to protect the resources natural and cultural of this state. Yeah. Well, I really appreciate you coming on the show today. This is, of course, one of those areas where, you know, it's hard to get the information. Sometimes you have to do a lot of outreach work, it would seem. Yes, I do a lot of that. Yeah, you have to do a lot of Saturdays. We spend talking to people about this. And for tourists, the benefit for them at the end of the day is that they get to come and continue to experience the all the wonderful things that we have to offer here in Hawaii. Yes, they have a lot of loha for the state. And this allows them to express it by supporting businesses that act in a responsible manner. Now, are you how is there any kind of a logo or anything that you look for in their documentation or their paperwork that do you have an insignia for them? Yes, on the website, we have an HEA. We also have a new tagline. Okay. Travel Pono. Travel Pono. Okay. That's awesome. Well, thank you again, Dr. Linda Cox for coming on the show. Thank you, my pleasure to be here, Chris. The Economy and You with Think Tech Hawaii. And I'm Chris Letham. I hope you'll stick around. And all of you out there, perhaps you should look for this. And remember, we have to keep Hawaii Pono. And we have to keep Travel Pono. Travel Pono. We'll see you again next week here on The Economy and You. And have a great day. Aloha.