Latest news with #DepartmentofBusinessEconomicDevelopmentandTourism
Yahoo
26-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Digitized agriculture form disrupts tourism data
Akamai Arrival, the pilot program for a digitized agriculture disclosure form, left out the optional tourism questions from the back of the form, creating a blip in the state's continuous tourism arrivals set that goes back to before the jet age. Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke said the decision was made to initially leave off the questions to start with a simplified form. Eliminating the tourism questions for the pilot program, which runs from March 1 to May 31, caused the state Department of Business Economic Development and Tourism to remove its daily passenger counts, a real-time measuring tool that has been available since Sept. 11, 2001. The data gap from the pilot also has left economists and tourism research professionals stumped on how to get enough nuanced information to calculate year-over-year comparisons for the monthly visitor arrivals and spending reports. Jennifer Chun, DBEDT director of tourism research, estimates that the pilot eliminates tourism questions from all arriving Southwest flights, all American flights, five Alaska flights, one Delta flight, two Hawaiian flights and two United flights—roughly 31 % of scheduled flights and 28.4 % of scheduled air seats. Paul Brewbaker, principal of TZ Economics, said an interruption to tourism data could have serious repercussions as economists use it to make economic forecasts. Brewbaker added that the Council of Revenues relies on tourism data to figure out how much money is available for the budget. The information also is used in bond ratings, which set the interests rates for government borrowing, he said. Brewbaker said interrupting Hawaii's tourism data set is problematic when tourism 'accounts for about one-third of the neighbor island economy and 15 % to 20 % of the statewide economy.' Don 't miss out on what 's happening ! Stay in touch with breaking news, as it happens, conveniently in your email inbox. It 's FREE ! Email 28141 Sign Up By clicking to sign up, you agree to Star-Advertiser 's and Google 's and. This form is protected by reCAPTCHA. 'I'm going to go write some papers now that say, 'Here's what the tourism data tell us, and from here on out we'll never know—so this is economic history now.'' The initiative was authorized under Act 196, and has been touted by state leaders, including Gov. Josh Green, Luke and Sen. Glenn Wakai (D, Kalihi-Salt Lake-Pearl Harbor ) as a significant step toward modernizing Hawaii's biosecurity efforts. Luke worked with legislators, the state Department of Agriculture, airline partners and stakeholders to develop the digital agriculture form pilot program. 'The consensus of all the airlines is that they wanted to start with a simplified form just under the agricultural declaration, and then we have the option to add more stuff as they get better in communication and customer questions, ' Luke said. 'This is kind of the first step, and then we are already having discussions about how do we reintegrate the visitor information.' Wakai, who chairs the Senate Committee on Energy and Intergovernmental Affairs, said he started advocating for a digital agricultural form five years ago, and initially was met with resistance, until 2024 when lawmakers passed a law encouraging the migration from paper to an app. He said ending the in-flight paper agricultural form would save at least $800, 000 annually, but more important, digitization increases completion rates and strengthens protections against invasive species. Passengers typically would complete the digitized form in advance of boarding their flight. 'Compliance for the digitized agricultural form was north of 70 %, and with the paper agricultural form it was 60 %, ' Wakai said. 'Now we are in discussions about how to add the tourism data. We may need to figure out incentives because participation in the tourism questions is voluntary.' DBEDT Director James Kunane Tokioka said agency received complaints after the pilot began March 1 and the agency removed daily passenger counts from its website. Tokioka said that he met with Luke and the Department of Agriculture on Friday to try to determine a workaround. 'I was very encouraged by the meeting, ' he said. 'By the middle of next week, we are hoping that we can figure out how to get the passenger count.' But Chun noted that the drop in collected tourism data goes beyond passenger counts and also affects visitor statistics methodology for the Visitor Satisfaction and Activity report. She said the pilot also could affect de facto population calculations. Chris Kam, president and chief operating officer of Omnitrak, the current vendor for the in-flight form, said the in-flight tourism portion of the form goes back to 1950, and the continuous data set has given Hawaii a strategic advantage by providing a snapshot of where visitors are going in Hawaii and their length of stay, which is a key to determining how much they spend per day. 'I'm not defending one format over another. I think going digital is unavoidable and this is the right direction, but we need to make sure we do it prudently from a research perspective, ' Kam said. 'We need a bridge during the pilot, and we need it sooner rather than later.' Rep. Adrian Tam (D, Waikiki ), who chairs the House Committee on Tourism, and Sen. Lynn DeCoite (D, Lanai-Molokai-Hana ), who chairs the Senate Committee on Economic Development and Tourism, said they want to see tourism data restored quickly. 'We are in the middle of a legislative session and deciding on our budget, ' Tam said. 'We look at everything that the Council of Revenues and UHERO (University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization ) puts out. The Hawaii Tourism Authority is part of the government, and they are in the middle of fighting for their budget requests, too.' DeCoite said tourism data needs to go beyond the passenger counts so that lawmakers can determine which tourism markets to invest in and where destination stewardship mitigation is needed. 'I want to know who is resident and who is visitor. I want to know what the visitor is actually doing—if they are coming under business or convention ; are they actually going out and using the parks ; are they part of a footprint that is impacting infrastructure here, ' she said. 'That will help us isolate out if the extra added impact fee that we are talking about would be sufficient or do we continue to do a reservation system.' Luke said it has not been determined when the tourism questions will be reintegrated into the digital agricultural form, and that more change is inevitable. She said conversations are needed now to determine how to capture the tourism data if the state moves from a digital agricultural declaration form to an advance notice. Luke said the optional tourism questions currently have about about a 40 % compliance rate. She said the Legislature has provided the Hawai 'i Tourism Authority with $3 million to begin planning for a smart tourism app, which could incorporate visitor data into a whole tourism experience. 'People cannot wait until some things are done, and then they panic and react, ' Luke said.
Associated Press
03-03-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
A ‘super-aged' population poses major challenges for Hawaii
Hawaiʻi faces a reckoning as its population of kūpuna age 75 and older surges, consuming more resources than they bring in. The challenge, outlined in a recent report, is on the state's doorstep: how to meet the needs of a group described as the super-aged. 'Those are ages at which the needs are greatest, whether you look at it in terms of money or in terms of health care needs or caregiving needs or anything else that you might think of,' said Andrew Mason, an University of Hawaiʻi professor emeritus who authored the report, which was funded by the state's Department of Business Economic Development and Tourism. 'This is going to require a lot of attention on the part of every segment of society,' Mason told Civil Beat. One in four Hawaiʻi residents will be over 65 in 2035, he said, and by then the state's super-aged population will number 219,000. The report, 'Aging and Hawaiʻi's Generational Economy,' examined how much every age group consumes in private and public resources and how much it produces through its labor. The gap shows where there are needs that must be met. Advocates for seniors said the report's findings are an urgent wake up call. 'Every policymaker and lawmaker out there should read this,' said Keali'i Lopez, state director of AARP Hawaiʻi. Aging Into A Deficit When someone consumes more than they produce, it's called a lifecycle deficit. The report's findings, while perhaps unsurprising, are stark: By the time they reach 80, people consume $52,000 a year more than they bring in. That's compared to people at 48, who the report said earn $35,000 more than they consume, which is a lifecycle surplus. Consumption by the elderly means the use of things like health care and federal benefits such as Medicare and Social Security, as well as of private assets such as housing and pensions. Meeting the challenge is a multifold task, Mason said. Not to be overlooked, he said, is addressing the needs of another age group that consumes more than it produces: children, whose consumption is centered on education and family resources. 'A big challenge is going to be to balance the needs of all generations at the same time that we're taking care of the needs of seniors,' he said. 'We also have to be sure that we're providing the resources that children need in order to be healthy and educated and prepared to succeed when they reach adulthood.' The Impact Of The Pandemic The report is based on 2022 data, updating an earlier version that used 2012 data, when the generational changes driving what Hawaiʻi is now confronting were getting underway, Mason said. Things have changed since then. From the earlier data, 'Important challenges were identified but the results … were optimistic,' the new report said. 'It appeared that solid economic growth and generational equity were well within reach.' Then, a global pandemic threw a wrench in the works. 'Our assessment of changes since 2012 … is sobering,' the report said. Mason put it this way: 'Covid-19 was such a tremendous setback in terms of unemployment and recession and cuts in public resources, that it really made it very hard to try to make as much headway as might have been hoped. We know that standards of living did not improve as much as we had hoped. And in some areas they had really declined.' The elderly saved less. Inflation worsened things all around. And children suffered well-documented educational setbacks, which Mason said are especially troubling looking forward. 'If we do not provide strong support for young people then seniors will really be in trouble in the future, because we need young people who can get good jobs and are highly productive,' Mason said. 'And we need an economy in Hawaiʻi that is supportive of those aspirations.' Caregivers Need Housing Status quo trends will not rise to the challenge, according to Lopez, of the AARP. 'With Hawaii's growing senior population and the fact that so many of our younger, working residents are leaving the state, it's very clear that there will be fewer resources, meaning taxpayers, people who are working and paying taxes,' she said, 'while at the same time there's going to be an increase of older adults here who are going to need to be cared for.' Creating more affordable housing is the most critical piece of the puzzle, Lopez said. 'That is the biggest issue: the ability for families to be able to remain here in Hawaiʻi,' she said. 'So affordable housing, whether it's for low-income, workforce housing, housing for kūpuna, supportive housing — just affordable housing in general.' Policy changes such as paid family leave legislation, giving people the space and time to care for older family members, are also imperative, she said. An AARP study found there are about 150,000 family caregivers in Hawaiʻi who put in a combined 144 million hours a year in caring for loved ones. 'If a whole lot of those folks aren't here anymore, you know, these older adults are going to need to be cared for,' Lopez said. She noted that bills that would have required the state to set up a family and medical leave insurance program died in committee this legislative session, but a bill to give unpaid caregivers a tax credit remains alive. 'It's all around, from our perspective, how to help family caregivers so they can continue their labor of love, so to speak, in caring for their loved ones,' Lopez said. The challenge, she said, has a particular resonance in Hawaiʻi. 'One of the things that's wonderful about Hawai'i is many of us who live here come from cultures where caring for your elders is very much the fabric of our culture,' she said. 'So being able to have family here who recognize that's a privilege is an important part of the social network to make sure that kūpuna can age in their homes where they want to.' Bearing The Burden The UHERO report asks what the cost might be of meeting the needs of the super-aged: 'Can working-age adults be expected to pay more taxes to fund old-age needs? Should we reduce spending on children to support a growing senior population?' It's a balancing act, Mason said, and it's clear who will have to perform it most. 'It's the middle generation that's going to have to be the ones that handle that balancing act,' he said. 'They get squeezed. They're the ones that have to provide both for children and for seniors. And so a lot of this is going to fall on them to make sure that we're successful.' Mason identified several approaches, in addition to creating more affordable housing. They could include adjustments to tax policy, he said – perhaps raising taxes on wealthier seniors – strengthening K-12 education, helping people save more for retirement and developing 'contingency plans' for any federal moves to shrink Medicare and Social Security benefits. The report, bracing as it is, ends on a positive note, saying: Hawaiʻi 'honors kūpuna and cares about their well-being. The last decade has been difficult for many but especially for children and kūpuna. The coming decades offer an opportunity to strengthen support for all generations.' Doing that, Lopez said, will require a willingness to stretch beyond what has been attempted so far. 'The interest is there. Identifying and figuring out what's the best way and what's a cost effective way to do that is what the Legislature is struggling with,' she said. 'In some instances, I think it's a matter of saying, you know what, 'Let's do a pilot. Let's attempt and try something and try different things and be prepared to fail, but at least try something different than what we've done all along.' UH political scientist Colin Moore agreed that the political will exists to take on the challenge. 'If there's any state and political environment that is sympathetic to the needs of kūpuna, I mean, it's here in Hawai'i,' Moore said. He also agreed that creating affordable housing is a key to meeting the challenges described in the report and said that politically the state appears positioned to take that on. 'Sometimes in the political process, the hardest thing is just making that issue the No. 1 priority. And I don't think there is anyone who is an elected official in this state or who watches its politics closely, who would say that housing isn't the No. 1 concern.' At the same time, he said, barriers ranging from regulatory obstacles to neighborhood opposition remain imposing. 'If you're truly going to assert the will, if you're truly going to reduce some of the barriers, there are going to be groups that are going to oppose you and are going to be angry about it,' he said. 'And often this comes down to the neighborhood level. And for a lot of elected officials, that's when it gets tough.' ___
