It was 8 a.m. on a Monday at the end of Akoni Pule Highway on the northern tip of Hawaii Island, and the little parking lot at the Pololu Valley overlook was already full.
Wearing a neon-yellow vest over a long-sleeve T-shirt, with her silver hair tucked under a broad-brimmed sunhat, Sarah Pule-Fujii directed traffic, speaking with a smile through the driver’s-side window of each arriving car.
“Are you folks hiking down to the valley today?” she asked.
Pule-Fujii has lived in the northern Kohala district on Hawaii Island all her life, and the highway there is named after her grandfather, Hawaii State Representative Akoni Pule. Since last August, she’s been working five days a week at the Pololu Valley overlook, managing parking challenges at the tiny, 12-stall lot there and talking with everyone who wants to make the steep, half-mile hike down to the valley and its black-sand beach.
The job is part of a Pololu Trail Steward pilot program initially funded by the Hawaii Tourism Authority (HTA) in an effort to mitigate problems resulting from a dramatic surge in visitors there over recent years. According to Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources officials, an average of about 1,000 people now visit the Pololu Valley overlook and trail every day.
Today, Pule-Fujii makes sure each group of hikers has water, encourages them to save some for the challenging trek back up, explains there are no bathrooms in the valley, asks people to pay attention to the private property and “no trespassing” signs and advises them to stay out of the ocean because of dangerous currents in front of the beach.
There is a stewardship program in Pololu Valley that aims to combat overtourism to the sacred area.
Credit: 2022 MNStudio/stock.adobe.comShe also tells everyone she speaks with that the valley is sacred Hawaiian land.
“I tell them about the burial sites in the dunes and that my ancestors are there,” Pule-Fujii told me during my visit last month. “I want them to stay away from there. I want them to have respect.”
Combatting Overtourism With Local Input and Action Plans
In 2019, Hawaii’s last full year of tourism prior to the pandemic, more than 10.4 million visitors traveled to the islands, a new record for the destination, according to HTA data.
2019 was also the 10th consecutive year in which Hawaii’s annual total visitor count increased year over year, and the destination saw its annual visitor totals grow by more than 32% over the decade.
As the state agency responsible for domestic and international tourism marketing, the HTA helped drive substantial market share gains to the destination during that run as more visitors brought vacation dollars to the islands. In 2019, travelers spent $17.7 billion in Hawaii.
We understand tourism does have an impact on our communities, our natural resources and even the Hawaiian culture, and all of that pressure was starting to build immediately before the pandemic.
“But we knew that kind of success also came with an equal amount of cost,” said Kalani Kaanaana, the HTA’s chief brand officer. “We understand tourism does have an impact on our communities, our natural resources and even the Hawaiian culture, and all of that pressure was starting to build immediately before the pandemic.”
By July of 2020, Hawaii basically had zero arrivals, according to Kaanaana, who said the state saw “unemployment skyrocket” during the destination’s tourism closure at the peak of the COVID-19 crisis.
“So, we said, ‘OK, how do we leverage this opportunity?’” Kaanaana recalled. “And we went to the community, and we said, ‘We want to hear from you. What’s going on? What should we be doing?’”
That outreach resulted in a collection of three-year Destination Management Action Plans (DMAPs) for all four of Hawaii’s counties, created with substantial input from residents, as well as government officials, community leaders, nonprofit organizations and tourism industry stakeholders.
“On every island, we asked, ‘How can we do this better?’” Kaanaana explained. “‘We want to put you in the driver’s seat to say: How should tourism be re-thought in your community and on your island?’”
Broad ranging in overall scope, each island’s DMAP identified a list of tourism hot spots — often popular natural attractions where increased visitor numbers have created tension with residents, such as the overlook and trail down to Pololu Valley. Kaanaana described the Pololu Trail Steward pilot program, developed in partnership with the community there, as a promising model to address overcrowding challenges that empowers Hawaii’s residents, who know these areas best and are closest to the issues.
“When you get someone such as auntie [Pule-Fujii] being the one to guide and inform visitors at Pololu, you get a much different interaction that’s authentic,” he explained. “Auntie is from there. Her family is buried there. You get people who care deeply and know deeply about that place, interacting with visitors and educating visitors.”
Marketing Hawaii Travel Around the Concept of Malama, Which Means “To Care for and Nuture”
Late last month, American Express Travel released its 2022 Global Travel Trends Report, and the online survey of 2,000 Americans and another 1,000 travelers from places such as Japan, Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada found that 78% of respondents said they want to have a positive impact on communities where they vacation.
Conducted Feb. 3-11 this year, the American Express survey also found that 81% of those questioned want money they spend while traveling to go to the local communities they visit.
Sentiments in the American Express report reflect a range of recently complied research data indicating the pandemic impacted consumers’ concerns about sustainable travel. Hoping to take advantage of that shift, the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau (HVCB) launched its Malama Hawaii package program in fall of 2020, partnering with hotels and resorts across the islands to offer guests a free night in exchange for taking part in a volunteer activity.
Malama is a Hawaiian word meaning “to care for and to nurture,” and Aloha State tourism officials have broadened marketing for the destination around that theme, hoping to inspire travelers to apply a more mindful approach to their vacations in the islands.
Robyn Basso, the HVCB’s senior director of travel industry partnerships, said her team has been teaching travel advisors about what it means to malama. Since fall of 2020, they have been offering a range of in-person trainings, webinars, email communications and consortia marketing that educates advisors about how clients can volunteer during their Hawaii vacations.
Hawaii’s Destination Specialist curriculum is also being revamped to incorporate malama content. According to Basso, HTA’s DMAP initiatives and malama will be covered during the HVCB’s West Coast Sales Blitz, which takes place from May 16-19 in Seattle, along with Sacramento, San Francisco and Orange County in California.
We’re just encouraging people who want to come to Hawaii to come with an open heart, an open mind and a love of this place. And to share in the work to make sure these islands continue to be the place we all know and love.
The aim is to offer advisors insight about “the importance of balancing the economics of tourism with the well-being of Hawaii’s communities and natural resources,” Basso said. “We’re letting them know these actionable plans outline priorities determined by the community, from managing hot spots to eliminating illegal vacation rentals.”
The HTA’s brand chief Kaanaana said he’s asking travel sellers not to think too rigidly about a precise collection of consumers who might be most receptive to the Malama Hawaii messaging or the many objectives within its DMAP initiatives.
“We’re just encouraging people who want to come to Hawaii to come with an open heart, an open mind and a love of this place,” he said. “And to share in the work to make sure these islands continue to be the place we all know and love.”
Trying Out a Malama Hawaii Volunteering Package
The brown mud I was standing in on Oahu’s eastern shore was wonderfully warm and looked a lot like melted chocolate.
Iwi Kurosu, a taro farmer and tour guide at Kualoa Ranch Private Nature Reserve, was teaching me how to pai pai there in a loi kalo, or taro patch. The process wasn’t complicated — we stepped barefoot on unwanted weeds one by one in the taro patch, submerging them below the water line and burying them into the soft mud.
There is a Malama Hawaii package offered at Kualoa Ranch, where visitors can work in a taro patch.
Credit: 2022 Kualoa Ranch“It interrupts the photosynthesis,” Kurosu told me. “So they won’t grow back right away.”
Later, while rinsing the rich mud off our feet and hands in the stream that irrigates the taro patches, Kurosu said cleanup there is important.
“Hawaiians always washed off mud from the loi like this,” she said. “That way, all the nutrients return to the stream.”
Frank Among, Kualoa’s director of sales and marketing, said in a later interview that the reserve offers the Malama Experience tour I joined there last month once per day. At the moment, the product is mostly popular with school and corporate groups.
“It’s a hard sell for the general public because a lot of them don’t know what a taro patch is, and it’s hard to even explain it,” Among said. “So we keep trying to tweak it, but we’re certainly not giving up on it.”
Kualoa Ranch has partnered with Outrigger Hotels and Resorts since the fall of 2020 on a third-night-free package for guests who participate in a voluntourism activity at the east Oahu ranch, but Among indicated he’s not seeing many Outrigger guests come out each month to work.
According to a spokesperson for Outrigger, the hotelier has sold about 300 Malama Hawaii packages among four different Waikiki properties since December of 2020. That works out to roughly five packages sold per month at each Outrigger Waikiki hotel since the promotion’s introduction.
Are Malama Hawaii Packages Selling?
Jack Richards, president and CEO of Pleasant Holidays, says the wholesaler has seen especially strong Hawaii sales in the first quarter of this year, and he expects overall business to the destination to be better in 2022 than it was in 2019, which was a record year for his company.
“The moment Hawaii announced its Safe Travels Program was terminating, we saw a rush,” Richards said. “Based on what we’re seeing today, we expect our Hawaii business to be up double digits compared to 2019.”
I’ll be candid with you: We are struggling with how we handle the malama program today.
Joelle Apilado, vice president of product development for Classic Vacations, says her company also saw strong demand for Hawaii in the first quarter, and business to the destination is now “significantly outpacing 2019.”
But Richards and Apilado both noted their companies have not sold many Malama Hawaii packages for participating hotels offering free-night deals to those willing to volunteer.
“I’ll be candid with you: We are struggling with how we handle the malama program today,” Richards said, explaining that his company has found it difficult to define the initiative to travel advisors and consumers.
“We buy into it; we support it,” Richards said. “But we need help in getting the message out from the HTA.”
Anneke Marchese, a Hawaii specialist and the owner of AM/FM Travel in Bend, Ore., said she hasn’t sold any Malama packages since the deals were launched.
“Our clients want to travel with mindfulness,” Marchese said. “But they don’t really know how, and unless we open a dialogue with them, that’s not happening.”
Like Richards, Marchese indicated more marketing by Hawaii tourism officials to explain malama and available Hawaii volunteer activities to North American consumers would be a big help. And while Marchese noted her business to Hawaii is down right now, she said that’s not due to weak demand.
“My numbers are purposely down,” she explained, saying she’s been sending clients interested only in sand and sun elsewhere. “I’m just very choosy about who I’m sending to the Hawaiian Islands. I don’t want to contribute to problems there.”
