 This is St. Tech, Hawaii. Community matters here. I'm Marcia Joyner, and we are navigating the journey. As a rule, we talk about, at least we have been talking about the choices for the end of life. But today, we are going to talk about the here and now. We're not going to talk about the end. We're going to talk about now. And to talk with us, we have my dear friend, and everybody knows we only talk to dear friend, Frank Haas. Welcome, welcome, welcome, Frank. Hello, Marcia. Thank you for being on the show. We've done a lot of stuff together, but not lately, so this is good to be here. So, what we're going to do to talk about today is one of those things that I've known Frank to be involved for as long as I've known him. But we're going to call this recreating the Hawaii Tourism Authority. How's that for a title? Okay. Frank has been part of everything. Let me see if I, let me read this right. Frank has been, he is principal marketing manager, engaged in business planning, accountability programs, new business development, research coordinator, environmental scams, presentation support, hospitality, and community customer service training, international projects. Wow. I can't keep a job. I need focus. But those are all things that I'm passionate about, and I love doing them, so I just, I just keep doing it. Just keep doing it. Yes, keep doing it. Well, and we, the community have benefited from all of these things. But now, you are taking on this tourism, the Hawaii Tourism Authority. And the paper, the news, and the bill before the legislature does not sound promising. So it takes people like you to recreate the Hawaii Tourism Authority, at least, I hope. Well, it's actually rethinking tourism in general because everybody is affected by tourism. Yes. There have been some scary headlines and sort of dramatic headlines last Friday. I know this show goes over and over, but recently there was a headline that says they keep coming. You know, we might get 10 million tourists this year. And the implied question there is what are we doing about it? Is that a problem? Certainly from the standpoint of the industry and the state economic bottom line, it's, it's, it seems like a good thing. When we drill into it, there are a lot of problems that come with that. And with those problems comes the need to manage tourism. And that's, that's really my thing. It's not as tourism good or bad. It's how you handle it, how you manage it. Yes. And we need to manage it. One of the things that concerns me about just to talk about let's, let's, let's stop promoting tourism. Let's stop marketing tourism is that, that means we stop controlling tourism. It's not just marketing. And I'll, I'll let you through our question here, but I can talk about the whole development of some of the strategic plans and why they haven't really been successful in that idea about managing tourism. Well, first tell us what is the Hawaii tourism authority? What, what is that exactly? Well, it was created in 1998. And if you go back to 1998, we had a couple of scares for the first, for the first time in a long time. We had a couple of years where there was either negative growth in tourism or flat growth and people said, oh my goodness, we need to change something. And what needed to change back then was there was no long term plan. There was no dedicated funding. The marketing organization for HVC, it was HVCB, which was not a state agency. So they were, they were really interested in, in the industry itself, not the broader idea of the state. And so the tourism authority was created to have a long term view and to have a statewide view, not just marketing, but all the other things that affect both the tourist and the resident when it comes to this important industry. The other thing that was necessary back then was to, if you want to have a long range plan, you need a dedicated funding. And part of that, the HVCB went to the legislature every year and with their tin cup and they said, please give us some money. And some years they would get money, some years they would get less money. And you can't, you can't really plan that way. So those two things happened. There was an agency that was created as a state agency with a broad mandate to look at all of tourism. And then coupled with that was dedicated funding. The mission of the tourism authority, and I wanted to find the right words, but it's to strategically manage Hawaii tourism in a sustainable manner. That was the intention. And what you're hearing now and what you're seeing with these scary headlines is that it's not being managed and it's not sustainable. So that's what we need to address. We also need, I think, I have a friend that works for one of the big agencies that do surveys and what have you. So they, their people, their worker bees went out to the international marketplace to do a survey of the tourists for a week. And what they came back with was the dissatisfaction of the Hawaii experience. And it seems to me, now that was just one survey, but I've heard that over the years, the tourists say, well, where are the Hawaiians? We came for Hawaii, where are the Hawaiians? There's nothing, Waikiki looks like any other major tourist destination. What can we do so that when we do invite people to come, that they have an experience of, that they can go back and say, well, my $1,000 was worth it. You know, what can we do? How do we, if that's what's going on and we have this organization whose mission was to make sure that we have a Hawaiian experience, what can we do? I'd like to say two things. One is to validate your finding from your friends doing research. There's a wonderful book by Stanley Plogue called Leisure Travel and in it there's a chapter called Why Destinations Decline and Fail and Nobody Does Anything About It. And it really goes back to the experience that the visitor has. As long as the visitor has a good experience, they're willing to spend the money. They're happy to spend the money because they're getting that experience. What happens over time is if you don't manage the experience and it becomes too crowded and there's just a sense that I'm not getting my money's worth, that's when you see the decline start. So the response to that really is a part of marketing that people don't talk about. People have a bad impression of marketers and marketing and I've been a marketer all my life so I understand that, I get that. But marketers do a lot more than just push for more people to come. Part of marketing is the product itself and we need to talk about doing more with festivals, doing more with events, managing the experience. You know, you have people going to Monteville Falls and there's no facilities there, there's no parking there. So the visitor goes there, they can't find a place to park, they go on this muddy trail because it's not maintained. They come back, they sort of borrow a resident's hose to wash the mud off. The residents are unhappy, the visitors aren't necessarily happy and that's a bad experience. We need to take a look at all those things and see how can we manage it. Do we need to somehow control the number of people that go on that trail? Nobody likes to be managed but if you don't manage something it's likely to become a problem like Hanama Bay was before we put some limits on that. In fact I remember I worked at the satellite city hall in Hawaii when it was early, early days. And nobody came to Hanama Bay so we used to do storytelling and what have you for local people to come to Hanama Bay. And then one day the tourist industry started advertising Hanama Bay and now you can't get there. Well it's not just the big things like Hanama Bay, I live in Kailua and the Japanese visitors are going there. They're getting on bicycles. And that's okay, it just needs to be managed. Maybe we need to talk to the tour operators and one of the roles for Hawaii Tourism Authority is to use their bully pulpit to talk to the wholesalers and say, the beach is pretty empty on weekdays, maybe you just do weekdays. I don't know what the answers are but once you see a problem emerging that's when somebody needs to step in and say how do we respond to it before it becomes a crisis. I've seen the crowd in Lanakai and it's like local people, if you live there you can't park. The Lanakai Pillbox Trail is just a mess now because of overuse. And here again, I don't know what the answers are but there are a lot of opportunities. Everybody's got a smartphone now, maybe we post messages about there's no more room on the today. You can't go on the Lanakai Trail today because it's already booked. We do that with Diamond Head now. We try to control Diamond Head. So we need a more comprehensive, a more expansive view of how to manage all these impacts. Where is that, quote, Hawaiian experience? That's part of the product experience. You know, if you look at why people go to a place, they go to sense the place itself and what it is. So part of this happens naturally. We have a lot of, I know this is going to air at different times, but this weekend is the Hawaii Book of Music Festival. Great local event, free, everybody can go there. But there are a lot of those that with technology people can find. But I think part of what the tourism authority and the state should be doing is to also create more opportunities for local residents to express the culture, but then for visitors and residents like to experience it. If you look at other successful destinations, New Orleans comes to mind. Of course there's Mardi Gras, which is a little much. It's over the top. But they've also got the Jazz Festival. They've got a food festival, they've got flower events. Santa Fe, New Mexico has arts and other cultural experiences all year. So we need to look at not only nurturing those that already exist, but developing new ones. And they have to be on strategy. They have to have a purpose. The authority was looking at funding a mixed martial arts event. That is not, in my opinion, what we're about. So we need to identify. The reason I think is because we have a champion that lives in Y&I. So all of a sudden that mixed martial, I think that's how all of that came about. Because he lives and he's from Y&I. And so they think, oh well, people are interested. And that's fine, however, and I think that should be done. But all the money that the promoters make, they ought to be funding that and not the state. And if somebody wants to do something on their own, we can't control that. And I think that's where that belongs. But what the state should support is those things that are relevant to our place, our strategy, our people, our culture. And I often say that a lot of strategy is saying no to things because everybody's got ideas. You remember the race car a long ago. But another saying that I use when I teach strategy is if you don't have a strategy, any road will get you there. So people come up with these ideas. So people come up with all these different ideas. I had one lady and I overheard the conversation waiting on the bus. And she said, you know, in Jamaica, I heard Jamaican music everywhere. She said, I don't hear any Hawaiian music here. And I just, well, you know, waiting on the bus and this is somebody else's conversation. But I thought about that. She's right. You don't hear it. Well, that's another opportunity when I was at, I used to work for Hawaii Tourism Authority, full disclosure. But I don't know what's going on with this now, but we had funded some musicians to play at the airports, for example. They also fund things. The Book of Music Festival that I also mentioned is partially funded by the Hawaii Tourism Authority. Now, with all the changes in the legislature with budget cuts and everything, you know, they've said, oh my God, too many tours we need to cut the budget. Well, some of what gets cut is some of these good things that are happening as well and some of the ability to manage and control and shape the destiny of this place. Well, yeah, I get that. But the hotels have a responsibility to advertise and market. And goodness knows there's plenty of them. Why, let's say Disney Hotel. I feel awful that the state is paying for what they're doing. You know, that kind of, and I'm sure that's where the legislature is coming from. Well, I can't blame. Because the budget is big and it's all-encompassing. And so these little things like that they probably don't see or know about. I'm guessing. When I describe Hawaii Tourism, I have described it as a mosaic. There are a lot of pieces to it. And it's really great if like a good mosaic, all those pieces come together. So the hotels are going to try to fill their rooms. That's their job. So that's what they do. But what the Hawaii Tourism Authority should be doing is talking about the types of people that come here and the types of experience that they come here for. And so if every way works together, you've got this wonderful, homogenous, beautiful mosaic. Well, now we have to take a break. When we come back with Frank Haas, let's talk about where you're going, where you want to take this. Okay? Sure. We'll be right back. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Foundation for a Better Life. Freedom. Is it a feeling? Is it a place? Is it an idea? At Dive Heart, we believe freedom is all of these and more, regardless of your ability. Dive Heart wants to help you escape the bonds of this world and defy gravity. Since 2001, Dive Heart has helped children, adults, and veterans of all abilities go where they have never gone before. Dive Heart has helped them transition to their new normal. Search diveheart.org and share our mission with others. And in the process, help people of all abilities imagine the possibilities in their lives. And we're spending the day with Frank Haas, as I told you, who's a dear friend, and with or reimagining, rethinking, recreating Hawaii tourism. Now, one of those things that you used to be a part of, doing its growth rather is the book and music festival, which is wonderful. It's free, it's open to the public, and everybody needs to go. So what is the date on that? That's this Saturday and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. So that's May 6 and 7. Yes. So if you go there, I think the tagline that we were using is celebrating those things that make us Hawaii. So it is the thinking, the books, the culture, and the dance and the music. So it's all free. This year, there's a free concert. I think it's four o'clock on Sunday with Jake Shimabukuro. So that would be terrific. And you don't get to see great Hawaiian music like that for free very often. I'm always, well, yes. And the books, I saw just a story the other day where bookstores are in these days, real brick and mortar, and people are reading. Well, and more than that, at the Book and Music Festival, you can actually hear from the authors that will be there. So the author gets to read from their books? Read from the book and discuss the books. It's a very lively event. People wander from tent to tent to hear different authors. And I've heard some really interesting discussions. I moderated a discussion once about Hawaii tourism. There were a lot of divergent opinions, and that's good, getting it all out there. So that's what the festival does. Okay, so if we're going to reimagine, recreate this Hawaii tourism authority, what would you do? How do you take it from maybe it's a success today and maybe not tomorrow? What do we do to lift it out of the doldrums and into tomorrow? Into a new way of tourism, of bringing tourists or not bringing tourists? How do we deal with what that should be? That's a 16-week college course right there. But let me address a lot of those issues in there. For one thing, it is about the experience. You mentioned experience in the earlier part of the show. It's not just about the number of people. It's the experience they have when they get here. And frankly, we can't absolutely control the number of people that come here. There's this pesky constitution. There's a clause in there that's about interstate commerce. And people save for the trip of a lifetime, yeah. But what we can do is talk about the types of people that come here and the experience they get when they get here. Now, the bigger part of your question is how do we do that? And I'm not sure it's anything necessarily new. It's just going back to the principles that were discussed when HTA was created back in 1998 to strategically manage Hawaii tourism in a sustainable manner. Great words. Apparently, if you read the headlines, it hasn't happened. So how do you do that? First of all, you have to realize that tourism is this big complicated thing. It's not just marketing. It's not just the marketing thing. It's the product. It's the workforce. It's the workers that interact with the visitors. It's the Hawaiian culture. It's the long-range planning. It's the environment. When we did the Hawaii Strategic Plan in 2005 to 15, there were nine strategic initiatives. And we said all of these nine things have to happen for us to be successful. And some of all those things that I just mentioned. And then there was a big discussion about, well, which is more important because some people said, oh, it's got to be marketing. And I'm the marketer. And I said, all of these things have to happen. So we put them in the plan in alphabetical order. The problem was the Hawaii tourism authority didn't have the authority to actually manage some of those things like the environment, like workforce development. So a lot of those things just didn't happen. There were some structural things that were done to try to make that happen, like the head of the Department of Transportation, the head of the Department of Land were supposed to be on the HTA board. In fact, they never really got involved, so that changed. They're just not there anymore. So by the time the 2015 came around and a new strategic plan was needed, the HTA said, well, we can't manage some of that stuff, so we're just not going to deal with it. So the new strategic plan pretty much focused on a few things that the agency can control. But that's a myth. The reality is successful tourism requires you to deal with all those things. Now, one of my many daughters-in-law is from Italy and speaks lots of languages. All Europeans do. And even though she and my grandchildren love coming to Disney, my grandchildren think that Mickey and Minnie Mouse vacation in Hawaii, so they want to go vacation with them. But she says it is not European friendly. Not just Disney, but all the hotels. You know, the language. They see signs in Japanese, but even for Chinese, everything is in Japanese. And she says it's not European friendly. That's a big one to deal with. We live in a global village. And if we take that 16-week course on tourism, there are a lot of problems. And that's one of them. It's not just language. It's also food. If you need kosher food, halal food, vegetarian food, vegan food, because that's what visitors are looking for. But language is especially a problem when visitors get in trouble. And the police don't have multi-lingual skills. And I'm teaching a course in safety and security. And the suggestion I had for the police department is, first of all, you should do language training. But if you can't do language training, at least have cards on you that say, do you need help in all kinds of languages. So there are, you know, Marcia, we can talk about lots of deficiencies. And that comes back to the fact that the visitor industry is multifaceted and we need to look at a lot of these issues and how to solve them. And we need an agency that has authority over those things and that can actually get them done. Things like homeless. You know, the homeless is a problem everywhere, but it's also a problem in the resort areas. Who wakes up in the morning and says, what are we doing about that? The airport experience. The airport experience. Landing internationally after a red-eye flight is terrible. They push you into this weeky-weeky bus. You have to stand up because there's not enough seating. People yell at you and then, you know, that's their first experience with Hawaii. I know, I hate to say how long ago it was, but when we first arrived on the airplane, the first time we came was on a ship. The first time, next on the airplane, and you had to get off the plane and walk down and across the, into this little, it's still there. And they greeted you with pineapple juice and the aroma of the lei. It was like, ah, this is paradise. You know, your first impression was absolutely wonderful and that's gone. It is. And it's harder to do with 10 million visitors than it was back with 2 million or 3 million. But it can be done. And we need to recognize that there are standards out there that we're not meeting, especially for our friends from Asia. If you come from Changi Airport in Singapore or the New Thai Airport, the New Bangkok Airport, that's their expectation. And they come here, which is supposed to be a wonderful resort where they're spending the rates in Waikiki average now are $230 some dollars a night. You know, there's an expectation that you're going to get that level of service. And unless we deliver that level of service, long term, that's where that decline and fail comes in. So tell me now your next step. We've talked about what has to happen. How do you go from here to your next step? What happens next? Well, I do not control things. So I'm just a private citizen who has a lot of opinions and I'm not shy about sharing them. But a couple things need to change. Marketing, I think, needs to change. Senator Wilkai says, well, when he was talking about cutting the budget, he said we need to take the foot off the gas. Agreed. We need to distinguish between promotion and marketing. Promotion is getting more people here. But you can take your foot off the gas, but you can't take your hands off the steering wheel. And that's the other thing that marketing does. So we need to rethink marketing. We need to talk about really focusing on the type of visitor that comes here rather than the numbers. And we know who the higher spending visitors are. The golf market, the wedding market, the incentive market, the business market, the LGBTQ market, all those markets. And there are other markets that we could identify that are higher spending. So we really need to focus on that. There's a phrase that I use in my marketing class called, small is the new big. You have to stop thinking about mass marketing and think about these smaller markets. The other thing to do is to really focus on the product and the experience. And that also requires investment. So cutting the budget is not necessarily a solution to the frustrations that people have about tourism. In fact, spending more money may ease those frustrations. Well, spending more money left one last thing. Several years ago, I was on the mainland in January. And there was this huge ice storm, gorgeous, beautiful ice storm. And before the end of the day, every warm weather destination had a commercial on the television except Hawaii. I'm okay with that because we're not selling sunsand surf. I would rather advertise to people who are looking for a cultural experience. No, but it was just amazing. My daughter and I said, where's Hawaii? Fiji, Dubai, Jamaica, you know, all these warm weather, because it was miserable. And everybody wants to get out of here. But that comes back to why are they doing that? Because they want more visitors to come because it's cold. I don't necessarily want more visitors to come. I want to advertise in a Smithsonian thing or in a travel show where we talk about hula or Hawaii cuisine or other things because that's the kind of visitor experience that we want to deliver. Well, so since this is a 16-week course, that means you've got 15 more weeks to come back. Okay. You will come back, won't you? I'm not a shy person, Marcia. Thank you for having me. Thank you. This has been a real pleasure. And thank you for joining us, and we'll see you next time. Aloha.