Worst Job in Tourism, $60/Hour Housekeepers, and Paradise Lost

June 02, 2026

Aloha !

Welcome to the latest edition of the Hawaiʻi Hotel Hui Insider.

This issue seems to have accidentally turned into a newsletter about change.

HTA is looking for a new CEO, Banyan Drive is preparing for another attempt at reinvention, Paradise Cove is making way for a very different version of Ko Olina, Google wants AI to become your travel agent, and hotels across the country are wrestling with the rising cost of labor, insurance, taxes, and just about everything else.

I recently spent some time back in my hometown of New York City for meetings and conferences, wandering through old neighborhoods that barely resemble the city I grew up in. Places evolve whether we're ready for it or not. The challenge isn't stopping change. It's making sure we don't lose what made a place special in the first place.

And if you missed it last month, we launched a new downloadable monthly report, published on the first Tuesday of each month, that summarizes key hotel data with actionable context. We'd love to hear what you think. Should we keep it going? 

Know someone in Hawaiʻi hospitality who should be reading this? Forward it their way. Sharing helps us grow the Hui!

Tired of reading this three days late through your boss's inbox? Join the Hui directly and get the signal sent straight to your own.

Mahalo for coming along for the ride!

Let’s dive in.

Mahalo,

Dan Wacksman
Hawaiʻi Hotel Hui Insider Editor-in-Chief 😄

Wanted: Tourism Expert, Cultural Diplomat, Political Punching Bag. Big Job, Modest Pay.

Fresh off the Senate’s approval of the new HTA Advisory Board, an HTA press release popped into my inbox announcing the official search for a new Hawai‘i Tourism Authority president and CEO.

I had actually thought the search was ongoing, but this seems to suggest otherwise. According to the release, the new leader will help guide Hawai‘i tourism into a “new era” while balancing economic priorities, community concerns, cultural values, destination stewardship, marketing, and oversight of the Hawai‘i Convention Center. Easy peasy. 😉

What caught my attention was the wording. The release repeatedly emphasizes collaboration with DBEDT, government, and the newly reshaped advisory board, a reminder that HTA today looks very different from the more independent authority it once was. The new CEO will operate under significantly more political oversight and scrutiny than many of their predecessors.

And then there’s the salary. Following last year’s very public debate around HTA leadership compensation, the position is now capped at the Lieutenant Governor’s salary (Act 168), currently around $185K annually. For what may be one of the most politically exposed and publicly dissected executive roles in the entire state, that’s probably going to narrow down the candidate pool pretty quickly. Not a terrible salary by most standards, but when recent hotel GM/MD postings in Hawaiʻi have ranged from roughly $150K to $500K, it does put things into perspective. 

You’ll need tourism expertise, political patience, crisis management skills, and the ability to survive Hawaiʻi’s endless tourism culture wars while everyone simultaneously blames tourism for everything, while also depending on it for the economy. No pressure.

Interested in applying? 😁 Deadline to Apply is June 26th.

Banyan Drive’s Latest Redevelopment Plan: Demolition First, Vision Later.

The state appears ready to move forward with demolishing the former Country Club Condominium Hotel on Hilo’s Banyan Drive, with lawmakers backing roughly $14M–$15M for demolition, grading, and site work.

The six-story property has been vacant since early 2025, after redevelopment talks stalled and Banyan Drive Management walked away from its proposed long-term lease deal. Since then, the site has mostly become an expensive security headache, with the state paying to keep it from becoming another Uncle Billy’s-style squatter and fire problem.

But this also appears to signal a bigger pivot: future development on Banyan Drive may move inland because of sea-level rise concerns, leaving some shoreline parcels as open space instead of rebuilding directly on the water.

Lawmakers are also discussing the possible acquisition of the Grand Naniloa Golf Course as part of the broader redevelopment puzzle. That seems to make a lot of sense. Too much land planning in Hawaiʻi happens parcel by parcel, with no larger vision until the damage is already done.

The bigger developers have figured this out. Look at Howard Hughes and Kakaʻako: whether you love every tower or not, Ward Village shows the power of having a coordinated, long-term plan instead of a haphazard approach.

If Banyan Drive is truly going to be reimagined, Hilo needs that same kind of bigger-picture thinking, just with a version that actually fits Hilo.

Demolition may finally clear away the physical blight. The harder question is whether Hilo has a real master plan waiting on the other side.

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Let’s be real: guests know the difference between a generic lotion made on the continent and the real thing. If you’re still stocking vanity kits filled with synthetic fragrances, you’re missing a chance to anchor your brand in true place-based luxury.

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These aren’t just "amenities", they are high-performance products that reflect your property’s quality. They already grace the counters of Hawaiʻi’s top-tier resorts because they deliver actual authenticity. It’s time to ditch the "aloha-wash" and give guests something they’ll actually want to take home.

The Price of Paradise (Cove) and Progress

Back in January, we mentioned the closure of Paradise Cove, and last week, I was surprised to come across a Washington Post feature story on the iconic Ko Olina Luau. The story framed Paradise Cove as a victim of the tourism ecosystem it helped create: Ko Olina grew into a luxury powerhouse, land values exploded, and eventually a massive middle-market luau stopped penciling out.

I came across the article as I was back in my hometown of New York City for meetings and conferences, walking through old neighborhoods that barely resemble the city I grew up in. Some changes are better. Some are worse. Either way, the city I knew is very different.

Reading about Paradise Cove, I felt that same mix of nostalgia, sadness, and reluctant acceptance. Places evolve. Consumer tastes change. Economics change. What once made perfect sense can eventually become impossible to sustain.

Editor-in-Chief Dan and family. 25 years later and still a cherished memory! A good reminder that sometimes the overpriced souvenir photo is worth every penny. 😂

The Paradise Cove site is now slated for a $135M redevelopment with retail, restaurants, entertainment space, and a smaller luau component. In other words: less mass-market tourism, more upscale mixed-use “experience economy.”

It is hard not to see the broader trend. We have talked many times about the desire to attract “higher-spending visitors.” Well, this is what that strategy starts looking like on the ground: fewer large-scale middle-market attractions, more luxury positioning, higher land values, higher operating costs, and pricier experiences.

Hawaiʻi’s cost of living is brutal. Employees need higher pay to survive. Owners want stronger returns on increasingly expensive assets. Guests are already pushing back on rising prices, fees, and shrinking value. That three-legged stool is wobbling again. More on that below.

Paradise Cove will not be the last example. Progress always has a cost. The hard part is admitting that some of the places we’re nostalgic for were already changing long before we were ready to let them go.

Disney Elevates Kimberly Agas at Aulani

Congrats to Kimberly Leimomi Agas, who has been promoted from General Manager of Aulani to Executive Director, expanding her role into broader strategic and community leadership initiatives.

Kim has been part of Aulani since day one, joining the opening team 15 years ago and serving as GM for the past decade. I’ve had the chance to work with her over the years, and she is clearly a great fit for the role: calm under pressure, deeply respected, and someone who genuinely understands both hospitality and Hawaiʻi (and Disney Magic 🐭).

Congrats, Kim — wishing you much success in this next chapter!

The Coconut Wireless Is Never Wrong

In the last issue, we reported that the coconut wireless was buzzing: Thomas Foti was leaving his role at Marriott and taking the helm as Managing Director of Hilton Hawaiian Village.

Well, it became official last week, with multiple stories covering the move and Thomas updating his LinkedIn page. We still couldn’t find the actual Hilton press release, but it's close enough. 😉

When we started this newsletter, we didn’t exactly expect to be breaking news. But here we are — our first scoop.

Congratulations, Tom. Based on the comments we heard from so many people on LinkedIn, you are clearly well respected, and Hilton Hawaiian Village is lucky to have you stepping into such a huge role.

Hotel Performance

Quick Summary (So You Sound Smart in Meetings): Statewide is RevPAR up ~2.6%, but all on the strength of the neighbor islands. Oʻahu is hitting a rough patch (RevPAR down ~4.8%), Maui is dominating as the rate leader at $544+ with RevPAR surging ~10.9%, and the Big Island and Kauaʻi hold strong with RevPAR up ~9.2% and ~2.9%.

HTA and DBEDT publish a lot of great data. We curated the metrics that actually matter to hotel operators, added context, and packaged it into a monthly report. If it's useful, we'll make it a regular thing.

Click here to sound REALLY smart in your next meeting: HHH Market Performance Report.

*Hotel performance data will be published in the first issue of each month.

Expedia’s Annual Pep Rally

Expedia held its annual Explore conference a few weeks ago. When I was on the hotel side, I always viewed these events as a bit of an Expedia pep rally, polished presentations, partnership buzzwords, and enough corporate enthusiasm to make you quickly refill your drink.

I did not attend this year, but I got my hands on the Cleveland Research Recap and, buried beneath the corporate theater, found a few interesting takeaways.

Probably no surprise, but Expedia believes the future of travel booking belongs to (wait for it….) AI agents, not humans, doom-scrolling hotel listings.

The company is leaning heavily into AI trip planning, natural language search, and connected booking assistants. One line that stood out was: “Content Quality is Match Quality.”

Translation: if your hotel content is outdated, incomplete, or sloppy, the AI may simply stop recommending you. This has always mattered, but now it is on steroids.

A few other interesting nuggets:

  • Business travelers now make up 35% of Hotels.com demand and convert at roughly 3x the rate of leisure travelers.

  • Expedia is still pushing packages hard because bundled bookings generate higher value and repeat rates.

  • Expedia’s ad business hit $758 million, which clearly shows many hotels are paying for position and paying commission. Add the two, and you will be surprised by what the actual cost of the booking is. (As an aside, Booking Holdings just launched BKNG Ads, giving partners one ad team across Booking.com, Priceline, and Agoda -- showing they want a piece of this lucrative pie as well.)

For hotels, the math keeps getting messier: commission, media spend, sponsored placement, package discounts, loyalty promos… at some point, “OTA production” needs its own fully loaded P&L.

Whether the guest starts on Expedia, Booking, Google, ChatGPT, or some AI travel agent we haven’t heard of yet, the rule is the same: clean content, strong economics, and knowing exactly what you’re paying for.

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With decades of experience across hotel operations, marketing, revenue, technology, and finance, we help teams cut through complexity, make smarter decisions, and get the right work across the finish line.

Hospitality’s Three-Legged Stool Is Getting Wobbly

The hotel business has always rested on a three-legged stool: staff, guests, and owners. The problem is everyone wants more from the same dollar now, and the math is starting to crack.

This past week brought another wave of labor headlines that could reshape hotel economics for years to come. In Los Angeles, city leaders are debating whether to delay the so-called “Olympic Wage” ordinance, which would push hotel workers’ minimum wages to $30/hour by 2028. Meanwhile, in New York, unionized hotel workers just ratified a massive new eight-year contract that could push some top housekeeper wages above $60/hour by 2034 in one of the country’s most expensive labor markets.

In Hawaiʻi, the recent Local 5 contracts in Waikīkī reportedly raised average housekeeper wages from roughly $28/hour to nearly $38/hour over four years, establishing a new benchmark for union hotel labor in the Islands.

And really, workers have a point. Housing, food, healthcare, and transportation costs have exploded everywhere, but Hawaiʻi may be one of the hardest places in the country to make the math work. Many hotel employees still can’t realistically afford to live anywhere near the resorts they work in.

But owners aren’t exactly innocent bystanders here either. Over the past decade, plenty of hotel assets were aggressively leveraged, refinanced, or acquired at valuations that assumed endless ADR growth and cheap debt forever. That worked great when money was basically free. Today? Interest costs, labor, insurance, taxes, and renovation expenses are all climbing at once.

So what happens? The guest gets squeezed: higher rates, more fees, leaner staffing, and fewer services, all while being sold a “luxury experience.”

Rising wages, higher taxes, insurance pressure, softening international demand, and debt-heavy ownership structures all seem to be hitting at once.

The reality is the industry needs balance. Staff deserve wages that reflect actual living costs. Guests deserve value and service levels that justify what they’re paying. Owners deserve returns, too, but not every aggressively financed deal deserves to be rescued through endless rate hikes and fee creep.

Eventually, guests push back. And when they do, everybody feels it.

Google Wants to Be Your Travel Agent

Google I/O is Google's version of Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, except somehow geekier. Held in late May, it's not exactly appointment viewing for hotel operators. But this year, buried in the AI announcements, Google made something pretty clear for travel: it does not just want to help people search for hotels. It wants to help them book.

The big shift is that Google Search is becoming more agentic. Instead of just typing "best hotels in Tokyo" and getting links, travelers may soon ask Google's AI to compare options, check rates, monitor prices, recommend the best fit, and eventually complete the booking.

A few things worth watching:

  • Google is expanding its Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) into lodging, which could allow AI agents to move from hotel search to actual booking.

  • Google's Agent Payments Protocol is being built so AI agents can transact on a user's behalf, with guardrails like budget limits and brand preferences.

  • AI Mode and AI Overviews are making search more conversational, meaning travelers may ask longer, more specific questions instead of typing short keywords.

  • Google's AI Max -- a new campaign type that replaces traditional keyword targeting -- is bringing travel ads into these AI-powered search experiences, shifting from keyword matching toward intent matching.

  • Early partners mentioned around these efforts include major travel players like Amadeus, Booking.com, Expedia, Hilton, Marriott, and Trip.com.

Translation: Google is rebuilding both the top of the funnel and the bottom of the booking path at the same time.

For hotels, this is not just an SEO story anymore. It is search, metasearch, content, booking engine, payments, advertising, and distribution, all starting to blur together.

If your content is outdated, your Google Business Profile is weak, your rates are inconsistent, your room descriptions are vague, or your booking path is clunky, the AI may simply recommend someone else (see Expedia story above).

And on the paid side, there is a tradeoff coming. AI Max may help hotels show up in more conversational, trip-planning searches, but it also means giving Google more control over which queries trigger your ads, what gets shown, and where the user lands.

For years, hotels optimized for humans typing keywords into Google. Now we may need to optimize for Google's AI deciding which hotels humans should even see.

Industry Events

*If you have industry events to share, please email me at [email protected].

Spotlight on Hawai‘i Hospitality Opportunities

*If you happen to have any job openings, let us know. We will be glad to include them in the newsletter, space permitting; send the job link to [email protected].

The inbox was relatively quiet this week, well that is compared to previous weeks! Maybe you were all out enjoying the beach, or maybe just avoiding your screen time (though our 72% open rate in the last issue would beg to differ 😉).

While the volume was low, the takes remained sharp! Though the amount of praise we've been getting lately is dangerously close to getting to our heads. To prevent a massive ego trip, please keep sending in your thoughts, and feel free to send some hate mail or tell me where I'm completely wrong, just to keep me grounded.

Here is what's on the mind of the Hui this week.

Keep the Kudos Coming!

  • “You crack me up. Love the headline.

  • “SO love this newsletter.” “

  • “I’m always so impressed with the clear, concise, informative, and thorough communication. Truly impressive job from you and your team, my friend! Bravo!”

The Tech & Travel Disconnect

  • “Most people on a trip open a ride-share app after they arrive at the destination airport. Some will reserve a ride in advance... I am not convinced that consumers will change their use and book the hotel first and then the ride, food delivery etc. Maybe subscribers will do that as long as the platform is buying the business, but that is not a sustainable business model. In real life, my plumber is not the first one who comes to mind when I need my shower tiled, the lights fixed, or the roof replaced.”

    • HHH Note: This is an excellent reality check. Tech platforms love to pitch the ultimate "all-in-one super app" dream, but consumer habits are incredibly stubborn. Breaking down those silos in travel is a lot harder than it looks on a pitch deck.

  • Google loosened the rules because it forces small hotels to spend money on their trademark. Interesting that there is no OTA bidding on the "Hilton Hawaiian Village" keyword, and you do not see Pepsi advertising on the "Coca Cola" search

The STR Pendulum (The Short-Term Rental Shift)

  • “Do Short-Term Rental Platforms grow the overall visitor numbers for a destination? In most places, probably not, and they will just shift business from other OTAs. In Hawaiʻi, it could be a little different as the STR business is seeing major political headwinds and inventory is shrinking. These platforms may potentially expose hotels to guests who would have otherwise picked a short-term rental.”

    • HHH Note: Most historical stats show that the short-term rental business actually did grow the total tourism pie in Hawaiʻi over the last decade, much to the chagrin of those who believe our annual visitor numbers should max out strictly based on available hotel rooms.

  • “IMHO, Airbnb has lost tremendous share on Oʻahu. Savvy hotels will pulse the market continuously and compete with rates when it makes sense… I am excited to watch how this goes.”

    • HHH Note: They certainly have. If you look at the recent data, short-term rental occupancy is running significantly lower than hotels, even after stricter county regulations have reduced total STR inventory. The pendulum swung incredibly far in the vacation rental direction for years, but through a mix of heavy regulation and shifting customer preferences, it's swinging back. Eventually, the market will find its natural equilibrium.

The Airport Soundcheck (Re: AI Music at the airport))

  • “Shame! For a destination which demands authenticity, this is an embarrassment...

  • “A terrible idea! Who thought of this blunder and who approved it?? 🤦‍♂️.

Agree? Disagree? The Inbox Remains Open!

The inbox is open for your anonymous confessionals, spicy takes, or sharp industry critiques. Fire back over at [email protected] or [email protected] and tell me where we got it right, or where we missed the mark entirely.

About Us

Hawaiʻi Hotel Hui was started by hotel industry veteran Dan Wacksman, CEO of Sassato, a Hawaiʻi-based consultancy that combines deep local expertise with a global perspective.

Our team brings decades of experience across operations, marketing, revenue, tech, and finance, all aimed at helping hotels and travel companies make smarter decisions and move faster. Whether you need additional expertise, extra horsepower, or just someone who thinks like you and moves things forward, we’ve got you. From local independents to global brands, we show up with a no-nonsense, results-focused mindset. To be blunt: we get sh*t done.

Recent projects include brand transitions, system selection (PMS, CRS, CMS — all the acronym soup), implementations, project management, feasibility studies, training, audits, and everything in between.

A lot of organizations deal with stretched teams, siloed processes, and messy tech stacks that quietly stall important work. We fix that. Happy to chat if this hits close to home.