An AI generated and office reviewed report summary.

Report No. 25-07

Audit of the Hawai‘i Tourism Authority

In 2020, as it entered its third decade, the Hawai‘i Tourism concluded that it needed a change. Its continuous drive to increase visitor numbers had taken a toll on Hawai‘i’s people and their natural environment. What was needed was a “re-balancing” of priorities, and for that reason, “destination management” would be the Authority’s focus and at the heart of the new strategic plan.

In its 2020 – 2025 Strategic Plan, HTA defined destination management as: “attracting and educating responsible visitors; advocating for solutions to overcrowded attractions, overtaxed infrastructure, and other tourism-related problems; and working with other responsible agencies to improve natural and cultural assets valued by both Hawai‘i residents and visitors.”

As part of this emphasis on destination management, HTA developed three-year Destination Management Action Plans for six islands. Actions and sub-actions vary in the individual DMAPs, such as protecting and preserving culturally significant places and tourist “hotspots”; as well as increasing communication, engagement, and outreach efforts with the community among other initiatives.

In Report No. 25-07, Audit of the Hawai‘i Tourism Authority, we assessed HTA’s achievement of its 2016 and 2020 – 2025 strategic plans’ destination management goals. We also evaluated the effectiveness of the agency’s DMAPs.

Learn how:

HTA’s new emphasis on destination management is not materially different from its prior efforts; largely a reshuffling of past and continuing programs.
The effort doesn’t seem to have involved any increased financial commitment; overall spending on destination management efforts remained generally level.
The Authority’s DMAP effort was largely ineffective, with most actions not addressing hotspots, predated the effort, or had already completed.
Many DMAP actions were impractical or unrelated to destinations and their management.

Read the full report here:
https://files.hawaii.gov/auditor/Reports/2025/25-07.pdf

Report summary:
https://files.hawaii.gov/auditor/Overviews/2025/25-07AuditorSummary.pdf

Thanks for listening. You can find this and other reports at: auditor.hawaii.gov