The Hawaii Knowledge Deficit

An important part of the job of the Hawaii Tourism Authority (HTA) is to overcome preconceived notions about Hawaii that discourage tourism. Tourism is too important (21% of the state’s economy) for Hawaii’s image as a vacation destination to be mainly a place where mom and dad or grandma go, although their importance for Hawaii’s tourism cannot be overstated. HTA wants Millennials to contribute more to the $43 million per day spent by visitors. But HTA realizes that Millennials don’t know enough about Hawaii. Traveler’s lack of knowledge of Hawaii’s attractions, however, is a much bigger problem than just Millennials. Over the years, Tom Barefoot’s Tours has learned that most of our hundreds of thousands of clients, and arguably most visitors to any of the Hawaiian islands, arrive in and leave Hawaii unaware of most of the unique features and experiences waiting to be discovered in the islands. We created a 10,000+ page website in order to compensate for this shortcoming as well as provide the digital tool for researching and booking activities and tours on each island. That’s the equivalent of more than 25 travel guidebooks! And whereas travel authors pride themselves in producing new editions of their Hawaii guidebooks every two years, we post changes almost every day.