The Travel Weekly Hawaiʻi Leadership Forum is pushing 30 years, and at this point, it’s less a conference and more an industry ritual. Sold out, familiar faces, and friends texting me asking if I had connections to snag a ticket. You’d think Bruno Mars was playing.
Credit where it’s due: Justin and the Travel Weekly team put on a well-organized, smoothly run event. And the food at the Sheraton was excellent, if not a bit over the top! Now, about the agenda…
The format will feel familiar if you’ve been before. Lots of updates; HTA, Airlines, OTAs, and the always amusing wholesale panel. Some sessions were basic updates with a few interesting data points being shared. But two moments stood out.
Aaron Salā at HVCB was again the most compelling voice in the room. He’s one of the few people in this space who genuinely understands both sides of the equation: the economic importance of tourism to the state and the responsibility to balance it with the community and culture that make Hawaiʻi worth visiting in the first place. Clear, consistent, and worth hearing every time.
And Ray Snisky put the current moment in perspective in a way that stuck. Paraphrasing: we’ve been through 9/11, the financial crisis, COVID… “hold my beer.” We’ll be okay. Hard to argue with that.
The most substantive conversation came from the wholesale panel, and the message was direct: competitive destinations are outmarketing us. They’re spending more, telling better stories, and winning travelers who would have defaulted to Hawaiʻi five years ago. We’re not losing on product. We’re losing on presence. The window to fix that is open right now, but it won’t stay open forever.
The irony is not lost on us that the same week, HB1950, which would have given HTA more stable marketing funding, was killed in the legislature. 🤷♂️
Like most events like this, the most honest exchanges happened on the sidelines, away from the mic. Which is great… but also kind of the point. If the real conversation is happening in the hallway, maybe that’s where the agenda should be.
That’s something we’re thinking about here at the Hui. More on that soon.
