Gov. Josh Green released $6.3 million to the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism on Friday for a tourism recovery campaign to help counter the continued softness from the August 2023 Maui wildfires and the expected downturn due to the wildfires in Los Angeles, Hawaii’s top tourism source market.

DBEDT Director James Kunane Tokioka said he asked Green to remove a restriction from within the DBEDT budget to fund a marketing campaign after Hawaii hoteliers shared the critical need to continue Maui tourism recovery efforts and bolster the Los Angeles market.

Green said in a media release issued Friday, “I want to acknowledge the leadership of the Hawai‘i Hotel Owners and Operators Roundtable and Hawai‘i Hotel Alliance who discussed this idea with DBEDT Director Tokioka and I to provide resources to support the state’s tourism recovery.”

Tokioka said he plans to meet with the State Procurement Office to determine whether DBEDT can contract with the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau to complete the campaign or if the contract needs to go through the Hawai‘i Tourism Authority.

“HVCB, they are the experts; this is something that they have been doing for over 100 years. They would plan it and give it to the HTA branding committee,” Tokioka said. “We would go through it, and then we would either approve it or deny it — that’s the fastest way to get it done because if we wait for HTA to do it, we have to wait one month for one meeting, another month for another meeting. It’s going to take too long, so I’m flipping it.”

The steps are somewhat unorthodox as HVCB asked for money for a marketing saturation at the HTA board meeting Thursday, but the board never voted on the request.

University of Hawaii at Manoa political scientist Colin Moore said, “I’m surprised that HTA was not named in the release and out front in the initiative.”

The route Tokioka is proposing also could be statutorily complex. Upon HTA’s creation it became the state’s designated tourism agency, and the portion of the DBEDT statue that authorized the department’s activities in tourism was repealed.

However, the lines have become blurred since July 1, when Senate Bill 3364 went into effect, repealing HTA’s exemption from the administrative supervision of boards and commissions.

Tokioka, who reports directly to the governor, said removal of the exemption, which was instituted by legislators who had lost confidence in HTA, makes it “an attached agency that needs approval for expenditures, the budget and (spending categories).”

The HTA board and Tokioka, who is a voting member of the board, were recently at odds when he blocked its attempt to get a second round of funding from the special tourism emergency fund.

“Everybody is talking about the urgent need for Maui — I agree,” he said. “I just didn’t agree it was an emergency, and this is not emergency funds, so I tried to find other funds that we could use to market Maui. This is a different box of thinking.”

Tokioka recently paused the board’s executive search for a new HTA president and CEO over concerns raised by Green that the previously approved salary was too high. He also overruled the board on its $80 million budget request and instead submitted a $70 million proposal.

It’s unclear how this latest departure from marketing procedure will play out. The method may be up for debate; however, DBEDT, the HTA board and large hotel interests all appear united in their goal of helping Maui tourism recover.

The push to address Maui comes as DBEDT’s final 2024 tourism numbers reveal that the state’s major economic driver still has further to go.

A total of 9,689,113 visitors came to Hawaii in 2024, up just 0.3% from visitor arrivals in 2023, according to preliminary statistics released Thursday by DBEDT. But total arrivals decreased 6.7% when compared with 10,386,673 visitors in 2019.

In 2024, total visitor spending was $20.68 billion, down 0.2% from 2023 but 16.7% higher than in 2019.

In 2024, 2,345,288 visitors came to Maui, which was down 6% from 2023 and down 23.4% from 2019. Total visitor spending in Maui for 2024 was $5.27 billion, down 9.1% from 2023 and up 2.8% from 2019.

Josh Hargrove, general manager of the Westin Maui Resort & Spa, said, “The governor’s announcement was amazing news. From 2022 to 2023, hotel occupancy in West Maui dropped about 10%, and it fell another 15% between 2023 and 2024. We’ve seen some improvement since the start of this year, but we don’t know if it will hold and, more importantly, if we will continue to grow.”

Hargrove said the impact of the Los Angeles wildfires on future visitor arrivals is still unknown and that the state must take steps to prevent a drop given that hotels and nearly all other visitor-­dependent businesses staff according to demand.

“We need to keep local people on Maui employed so that they have the stability to get to the next phase,” he said.

Jerry Gibson, president of the Hawai‘i Hotel Alliance, said hotel industry leaders worked together for many months to put together a strong marketing plan, and “HVCB will be the operator. They are going to put their expertise into it because they are the pros.”

Gibson said the plan, which includes wholesalers and incentive houses, is aimed at producing a consistent marketing program on a monthly basis.

“We’ve designed a good basic campaign for Maui,” he said. “This should make a big difference for 2025 and 2026.”

Keith Vieira, principal of KV & Associates, Hospitality Consulting, said: “We are happy that the governor is releasing $6.3 million in marketing dollars as we are really in need, and it will help based on the success of the Los Angeles marketing saturation campaign last fall.

“It’s good news that DBEDT, HVCB, HTA and other organizations are all pulling together in order to come up with the best possible plan, because there wasn’t a lot of participation by the industry in the (fall saturation) because a lot of it was last minute,” Vieira said. “This will provide time to climb on board which will grow the marketing spend on the industry side, too.”

While many of Hawaii’s residents depend on the state’s tourism economy, not all community members support its growth, especially through arrivals.

K C Connors, administrator for Enough Tourists Already, said the Facebook group has grown to more than 3,000 members largely because some Hawaii residents are concerned that tourism has expanded beyond the carrying capacity of the islands and question whether its benefits outweigh the negatives.

“There’s a huge conflict of interest. The government should protect the aina and put the residents first, and who gets put first is the oligarchy — the big companies,” Connors said. “This overtourism is destroying the goose that lays the golden egg. It’s ridiculous.”