The Hawaiʻi Visitors and Convention Bureau just announced three senior hires inside a single window — and the titles are more interesting than the names.

According to Big Island Now, HVCB has appointed Jena Zarro as managing director of integrated communications (effective March 1), Mitsue Varley as director of international business development (April 1), and Matthew Clarkson as senior director of data intelligence (April 16). The bureau frames the hires as part of its transition into what it calls a “Destination Futures Enterprise” — a private, nonprofit, regenerative destination leadership organization that, in its own words, treats Hawaiʻi as a living system to be stewarded rather than a product to be sold.

Read past the press-release language and an org-chart story emerges. HVCB just installed dedicated leadership for three things every legacy DMO is still trying to bolt on after the fact: an internal-and-external communications system, a structured global B2B function, and a senior leader whose entire mandate is “enterprise performance architecture” — i.e., how the organization defines success, measures impact, and aligns resources to strategic priorities.

What this means for DMOs

Most U.S. DMOs already say they want to evolve beyond ad spend and visitor counts. Few have actually rebuilt their org chart to do it. HVCB’s hires are useful as a benchmark because they make the structural commitment legible: the bureau is not just adding staff; it is creating senior-level homes for capabilities that traditionally got distributed across marketing, IT, and partnerships.

The data intelligence hire in particular is notable. Hawaiʻi has been one of the most-studied destinations in the country precisely because the state spent years arguing publicly about how to measure the cost of tourism alongside its benefit. Putting a senior director in charge of how the bureau itself defines success is the operational version of that conversation.

For boards looking at their own organizations, the question is not whether to hire a “regenerative” anything. It is whether your existing org chart has a place to put the work at all. Destinations International’s 2026-2027 content themes point in the same direction — funding, stewardship, and innovation no longer fit cleanly inside a marketing department.

HVCB just gave the rest of the industry a reference architecture. The next move is yours.

Photo by Flora Hon on Unsplash