Tourism Cares has partnered with Hawaii’s visitor industry to launch the Meaningful Travel Map of Hawaii, a digital tool designed to connect travel sellers with sustainable and community-driven experiences, tours and accommodation options across the Hawaiian Islands.
Purposeful Partners
In partnership with the Hawaii Tourism Authority (HTA) and the Hawaii Visitors and Conventions Bureau (HVCB), Tourism Cares unveiled the Meaningful Travel Map of Hawaii earlier this month, showcasing 24 different tourism businesses and community organizations across the state.
Through this tool, advisors can connect their clients with regenerative, culturally rich and immersive experiences that contribute to Hawaii's wellbeing.
“The Meaningful Map empowers travel professionals to craft more purposeful itineraries,” said Robyn Basso, senior director of travel industry partnerships at the HVCB. “Through this tool, advisors can connect their clients with regenerative, culturally rich and immersive experiences that contribute to Hawaii's wellbeing. This allows visitors to form deeper connections with the people and culture of Hawaii while ensuring their travel supports local communities.”
The new Hawaii Meaningful Map features activity providers such as Hawaii Forest and Trail and Deep Blue Eco Tours, as well as the nonprofit organization Maui Cultural Lands and the Bishop Museum in Honolulu. According to Basso, the HVCB worked with Tourism Cares to select impact partners for the Meaningful Map that aligned with the destination’s focus on preserving natural resources, native Hawaiian culture and community.
“This partnership translates Hawaii’s vision of community-centered tourism into action,” Basso said. “We're helping redirect tourism dollars directly to initiatives that preserve our culture, protect our environment and strengthen our communities. With 24 organizations already featured and more to come, we're creating a framework where visitor spending actively supports, rather than strains, Hawaii's residents and ecosystems.”
Growing Global Reach
John Sutherland, the director of community impact for Tourism Cares, said his nonprofit organization debuted the Meaningful Map idea in 2017, but then relaunched the concept on a global scale in 2023. Today, Tourism Cares’ Meaningful Travel Map features more than 30 destinations and hundreds of local organizations around the world.
“We're trying to bridge two things: allowing destinations to tell their sustainability stories and connecting travelers to organizations and experiences that will have a positive impact,” Sutherland said. “Tour operators and travel advisors are our main audience. If I'm selling Scotland, for example, all I have to do is go to the Meaningful Travel Map, look at Scotland, and I've got 20-something different partners I could potentially engage that are going to put together good experiences but also have this positive impact.”
Sutherland noted that Tourism Cares was really excited to add Hawaii to its Meaningful Map initiative.
People think of sun and sand in Hawaii, but there's richer engagement possible when we look a little bit deeper.
“At Tourism Cares, we really do have a very lofty mission to change the world through travel,” he said. “People think of sun and sand in Hawaii, but there's richer engagement possible when we look a little bit deeper and when we try to be thoughtful about who we include in our supply chain of destinations. Hawaii was such a good example of our broader take on what meaningful travel is and what it can do.”
Meaningful Exposure
To kick off the Hawaii expansion, Sutherland joined a group of 20 travel advisors for a five-day Tourism Cares Meaningful Travel Familiarity tour on Maui in December, organized in partnership with the HTA and HVCB.
“We started out with a full-day educational program, where we talked about sustainability and we had panels from local impact partners who discussed their work and what they want tourism to look like in the islands,” Sutherland recalled. “We were having some very honest conversations in the room during our education day, and it’s so awesome to be around people who care so much about where they live because that can be the starting point for really meaningful change.”
From there, the advisors headed out to experience the core Hawaiian values of “kuleana” (responsibility) and “malama” (care) with Meaningful Map partners Maui Pineapple Tour, Maui Kuia Estate Chocolate, Skyline Hawaii and Trilogy Excursions. Sutherland said all the activities were memorable and informative, but the chance to plant native sandalwood trees on the slopes of Haleakala with zipline ecotour operator Skyline Hawaii really stood out.
“They're rewilding this huge area that had been clear cut of all the sandalwoods,” Sutherland said about Skyline’s conservation project. “It’s just such a great example of the way tourism can have a positive impact through deep engagement with a local environment or local culture. It felt like we were part of a much bigger thing. You can look up on the hillside and see 10 years of work and how they're bringing the forest back. All these many small contributions have led to this huge impact.”
