STAND. COM. REP. NO. 2577

Honolulu, Hawaii

RE: S.B. No. 2659

S.D. 1

Honorable Ronald D. Kouchi

President of the Senate

Thirty-Second State Legislature

Regular Session of 2024

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committees on Energy, Economic Development, and Tourism and Water and Land, to which was referred S.B. No. 2659 entitled:

"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO REGENERATIVE TOURISM,"

beg leave to report as follows:

The purpose and intent of this measure is to:

(1) Incorporate a regenerative framework into the Hawaii State Planning Act by expanding objectives and policies for the visitor industry; and

(2) Require an update to the State Tourism Functional Plan to be submitted to the Legislature no later than twenty days prior to the convening of the Regular Session of 2025.

Your Committees received testimony in support of this measure from the Hawaiʻi Tourism Authority, Office of Planning and Sustainable Development, and one individual.

Your Committees find that tourism has major environmental impacts, such as biodiversity loss, landscape impact, and waste and water scarcity. Regenerative tourism represents a sustainable way of traveling and discovering new places that also supports residents' preferences for managing tourism development. Your Committees additionally find that a regenerative tourism model will provide activities for visitors that allow travel destinations to heal, while counterbalancing the social, economic, and environmental impacts of tourism.

Your Committees have amended this measure by making technical, nonsubstantive amendments for the purposes of clarity and consistency, including the correction to the proper name of the Office of Planning and Sustainable Development in the measure's report title.

As affirmed by the records of votes of the members of your Committees on Energy, Economic Development, and Tourism and Water and Land that are attached to this report, your Committees are in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 2659, as amended herein, and recommend that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 2659, S.D. 1, and be referred to your Committee on Ways and Means.

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committees on Energy, Economic Development, and Tourism and Water and Land,

________________________________ LORRAINE R. INOUYE, Chair

________________________________ LYNN DECOITE, Chair