Tourism Talk
Lawmakers right to hold Hawai'i Tourism Authority accountable
By Michele Kayal
Advertiser Staff Writer
After weeks in an unforgiving spotlight, the Hawai'i Tourism Authority can finally relax: legislators who poked and prodded the board all session are about to wrap up work and turn off their high beams.
Of primary interest to inquisitive lawmakers was whether the authority has kept up on its main mission: being accountable for $61 million a year entrusted to its care.
On its face, the authority seems to have done good work. Visitor arrivals hit a record last year. So did visitor spending. Skeptics might argue that the blazing Mainland economy would have sent people Hawai'i's way whether board members had worked or spent the year on Kuhio Beach sipping margaritas. But since their carefully crafted plan did in fact aim to increase visitors and their spending — especially from specific, targeted areas that also showed improvement — perhaps it was good work that brought the good results.
But to some lawmakers, that wasn't the point. They wanted to know in very clear, specific terms how this agency they created is tracking the dollars it's given, and how it's evaluating the bang it gets for the taxpayer buck. Early in the session the board did not do an effective job of reassuring antsy legislators.
The board's chief executive officer didn't know whether the staff had been evaluated. Couldn't say, when asked what percentage of funds went to contractors. Failed to explain why the board's primary vendor — the Hawai'i Visitors and Convention Bureau, with more than two-thirds of total funding — hadn't received a formal evaluation in more than two years of service. And when the chairman was asked what target had been set for visitor spending, he could not answer.
Visitor spending forms the core of the board's strategic plan. It is the yardstick by which success is supposed to be measured.
Mouths were open. Eyebrows were raised. And though the board's performance may have improved in later appearances — and lawmakers ultimately dropped measures to audit and abolish the authority — accountability had been walked to the end of the plank, and there it remains.
Some have pointed out that the theatrics were played out in a political stage, and that politics has its own way of shaping things. Lawmakers have been out of the tourism funding game for more than two years now, ever since they created the authority. It's not unusual for mothers to panic a bit about what their kids are up to. And new leadership, like the Capitol has this year, can and often does assert itself.
But those factors should not obscure the central fact: Accountability remains the very thing that started all this, the reason the state created a tourism authority in the first place. The industry wanted its own dedicated pot of money, instead of one that had to be painfully milked from the Legislature each year. The Legislature and tourism stakeholders wanted someone to answer for whatever money was spent on the state's behalf. Voila, the tourism authority and its 61 million tax dollars.
Wiping out the board, which was threatened right up to the end, could have brought more problems than it solved. Most folks say they'd only wish the old system on a competitor. And shifting direction now would have sent tourism marketing into flux again, something the state cannot afford as visitors begin putting their wallets back in their pockets and the stock market continues to struggle.
But forcing the authority to demonstrate that it has its act together — which shouldn't be difficult if it does in fact have its act together — could shed the light that all sides are looking for.
Michele Kayal's column appears on Tuesdays. She can be reached by e-mail at mkayal@honoluluadvertiser.com
