A Reason To Think Twice Before Visiting Hawaii!

by Shelli Stein

Are you one of the visitors Hawaii wants? In other words, are you a “mindful visitor”? If so, Hawaii Tourism Authority welcomes you to the islands. According to reports, with details to follow, the agency is planing for a Maui travel recovery plan for “mindful visitors.”

If you’re a “mindful and respectful” European visitor, you are welcome as well.

Using the same verbiage, Hawaii is reaching out to Europe, where perhaps more “mindful” tourists can be found. A new entity entitled Hawaii Tourism Europe will be a venture by HTA empowered by the private company Emotive Travel Marketing.

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“HTA is eager to rejuvenate our longstanding relationships in Europe and support this strengthening visitor source market to help drive economic recovery for Hawaii,” reports Daniel Nāho‘opi‘i of the HTA.

If you’re interested to learn more you can read the HTA press release here.

It elaborates the message that “Strategic efforts will educate European visitors about traveling mindfully and respectfully while supporting Hawaii’s communities and economy. Focus will also be placed on driving visitor spending…”

Hawaii Tourism Authority reaffirms Hawaii’s tourism direction.

“The brand marketing will be targeted to mindful travelers with an emphasis on lifetime trip expenditures and increasing per person, per day expenditures.”

Beat of Hawaii reports the HTA said that European visitors contributed $268M to Hawaii’s economy in 2019. That is small, however, in relation to overall visitor spending in Hawaii, which was $1.91 B in 2019 and $2.18 B in 2022.

The new Hawaii tourism buzzword is “mindful.”

I’m thinking you’d agree that we are all expected to behave appropriately whether we are traveling within Hawaii, in Europe, or anywhere, right? But what exactly is Hawaii expecting of its visitors?

Beat of Hawaii has an interesting take on this.

You can also read more about how the HTA make its decisions and why is it so heavily criticized.

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Final Thoughts

One can easily be made to feel that the HTA uses “mindful” to mean high-spending visitors. The current governor has gone on record saying he seeks to reduce low-spending tourism. If the HTA doesn’t mean to equate “mindful” with high spending they can surely clear up this impression. Seems to me anyone who chooses to visit Hawaii rather than many other less expensive destinations is already a high-spending visitor.

What’s your take when a destination creates messages like this? Does it dissuade you from visiting?

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1 comment

Boraxo March 29, 2025 - 12:26 pm

How absurd. The prices are so high now there is no such thing as “low spending” tourism in Hawaii. And does this mean the governor does not want tourists who support food trucks and low priced restaurants??

I don’t need to visit overpriced Hawaii anymore except on points. Then he will get $0 in lodging revenue or taxes.

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