On Wednesday, I stood on the great lawn of the Hilton Hawaiian Village in Waikiki and watched as a life-sized Pikachu helped kick off the 2024 Pokémon World Championships, taking place this weekend in Honolulu.
I was surrounded by dozens of YouTubers and social media influencers who had flown in for the event, all armed with iPhones and vlogging gear, some even wearing Pokemon-themed aloha shirts.
They didn’t seem like typical Hawaii visitors, especially considering many of them were walking around Pokemon Worlds’ trainer town, talking into their cameras or playing Pokemon Go on their smartphones. It’s hard to tell if they noticed the nearby beach or the swaying palm trees.
But their followers will.
Honolulu is hosting the Pokémon World Championships for the first time ever. (The Big Island has hosted the event three times before at the Hilton Waikoloa Village Resort, most recently in 2012.) According to organizers, more than 3,000 people from over 50 countries and regions will compete at the Hawaii Convention Center this weekend—most of them bringing family and friends—and another 14,000 people have registered to watch.
That doesn’t include the thousands of people who were unable to get an appointment to shop at the Pokémon Center Worlds store or a badge for in-person activities at the center, but who visited Trainer Town at the Hilton Hawaiian Village to meet Pokémon characters and play Pokémon games for free.
According to the Hawaii Tourism Authority, estimated visitor spending during this event is over $57 million, with $6.7 million generated in taxes. (The HTA has not sponsored the event, but is working with the Pokemon Company to bring it to the state.)
And thanks to these influencers, millions of eyes will be on the islands.
I started playing Pokémon Go two years ago. I’d like to say I signed up for my now seven-year-old son—which is technically true, that was the impetus—but I play it a lot more than he does. The mobile game, which is one of the competitive events of the Pokémon World Championships, requires you to run around catching, evolving, and battling Pokémon. And since there are Pokémon characters tied to specific locations—Comfey, for example, is a Lei-type Pokémon that can only be caught in Hawaii—serious trainers (that’s what we’re called) also like to travel.
One of the YouTubers we follow – Brandon Martyn (@mystic7) – is here and his latest video, shot in Waikiki, already has over 124,000 views. (Martyn, who has been vlogging for 11 years, has 2.73 million subscribers on YouTube.)
Jonathan Gilyana (@JTGily), another Pokemon Go player and YouTuber with 380,000 subscribers, uploaded a video of himself trying to catch a Shiny Shadow Lugia – trust me, it’s a cool Pokemon – in
Waikiki; this video has been viewed over 35,000 times and counting.
It’s hard to come up with statistics on the demographics of Pokémon Go players, but according to a number of online sources – and my personal observations – the game, which has an average of about 81 million active players per month, appears to be played primarily by the older generation, ages 35 to 54 (like me). Teenagers and young adults may have downloaded the game when it came out, but are no longer actively playing it.
This is an ideal destination for Hawaii’s tourism industry: older people, likely working with disposable income, eager to visit new places to catch new Pokémon and add them to their Pokedex. And they’ll likely be engaging in low-impact activities, like walking around the Ala Moana Center.
Martyn has already been to Kauai – he stayed at the 1 Hotel Hanalei Bay – and posted a video about it that has been viewed 171,000 times. (He travels around the world – Germany, Australia, Japan, Taiwan, France – playing the game.)
This past weekend on Maui, I met a family of four from Massachusetts who were in town for the competition. The eldest son, Russell Monteiro, had qualified to participate in the Pokémon TCG (Trading Card Game) event.
I’m not going to lie: when I saw Martyn at the Pokemon Go Fest in Sendai City this year, I immediately looked up airfares to Japan.
Pokemon – the cards, the app, the Ninendo Switch game – is family-friendly and fun, and Hawaii has plenty of opportunities. In July, New York City hosted the annual Pokemon Go Fest, drawing more than 74,000 players and fans to Randall’s Island Park over three days. (My son’s classmate and his dad flew from Honolulu to New York City just to run around and play the game.)
According to Niantic, the developer of Pokemon Go, the annual Pokemon Go Fest in 2023 generated a total of $323 million for the local economies of the three host cities – New York City, London and Osaka. More than 194,000 people attended the in-person events.
By comparison, the 2023 European Football Union (UEFA) Champions League final was expected to bring in about $80 million to the host city of Istanbul, the company added, and Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour concerts in Kansas City that same year brought $48 million to the local economy.
Hawaii has considered a variety of options to attract well-meaning — and wealthy — visitors to the islands, from promoting wellness programs to hosting professional sporting events. Perhaps we need to cast the net in a different direction.
As the Pokémon saying goes, “Gott mich catcher ’em all.”
