Hawaii Magazine
Hawaii Magazine, styled as HAWAIʻI Magazine, is a travel and culture magazine based in Honolulu, Hawaii, in the United States, devoted to the Hawaiian Islands. Established in 1984, it speaks primarily to travellers who love Hawaii — people planning a visit, remembering a visit, or hoping to return — and it aims to help them experience the islands respectfully and authentically. Through its print publication, its website at hawaiimagazine.com, newsletters, and social media, the magazine tells stories about Hawaii's places, food, history, culture, and natural beauty. Since 2007 it has been published in Honolulu as part of aio Media Group, formerly PacificBasin Communications, alongside some of Hawaii's best-known local publications.
Established in 1984 and Published First from Southern California
HAWAIʻI Magazine was established in 1984. For its first 23 years it was published in Southern California, an arrangement that reflected its original audience: mainland readers, especially on the West Coast, for whom Hawaii was a dream destination, a honeymoon and holiday market, and a place of enduring fascination. Producing a Hawaii magazine from California was commercially logical — the readers and many travel advertisers were there — but it also set up the defining change in the magazine's history. In 2007, after more than two decades on the mainland, the magazine moved home, joining the publishing family then known as PacificBasin Communications in Honolulu. That relocation grounded the title in the community it covered and aligned it with locally owned Hawaii media.
Part of aio Media Group in Honolulu
The magazine's publisher, aio Media Group, is locally owned and headquartered in Honolulu, at 1088 Bishop Street. The group, formerly PacificBasin Communications, also publishes HONOLULU Magazine, Hawaii Business, and Hawaii Home + Remodeling. This sibling relationship is important and sometimes confusing to outside readers, because the titles are distinct. HONOLULU Magazine is the historic city magazine for island residents, with roots in the nineteenth century. HAWAIʻI Magazine, founded in 1984, is the travel-focused title, written chiefly for visitors and Hawaii enthusiasts wherever they live. Sharing a Honolulu newsroom family gives the travel magazine access to local knowledge and photography, while the two magazines serve different readers and purposes within the same island market.
An Audience of Mindful Travellers
HAWAIʻI Magazine describes its readers as mindful travellers who love and respect the islands. Its stated aim is to inspire readers to travel with an open mind and heart, to care for Hawaii — expressed in the Hawaiian concept of mālama, to care for and protect — and to seek out authentic experiences through rooted storytelling. That positioning distinguishes the magazine from purely transactional travel media built around deals and itineraries. It assumes a reader who wants to understand Hawaii, not merely consume it: someone interested in Hawaiian culture and history, in locally owned businesses and food, in the difference between the islands, and in behaving as a guest in a place that is other people's home.
Reaching More Than a Million Readers a Month
Through its combined print publication, website, email newsletters, and social media platforms, the HAWAIʻI brand reports reaching over one million readers each month. That scale makes it one of the most widely encountered English-language introductions to the islands. For many mainland and international readers, its features, photography, and practical guidance form part of the planning process months before a trip — which island to choose, where to stay, what to eat, which beaches, trails, towns, and cultural sites to prioritise — and part of the afterlife of a trip, sustaining interest in returning. The magazine has also been described as Hawaii's largest paid publication and as an international magazine published from Honolulu, reflecting both its subscription base and its newsstand and digital reach beyond the state.
Coverage Across the Islands
The magazine covers Hawaii as an archipelago, not a single destination. Its reporting spans Oʻahu, home to Honolulu and Waikīkī; Maui; the Island of Hawaii, often called the Big Island; Kauaʻi; Molokaʻi; and Lānaʻi — each with a distinct landscape, history, and travel character. Stories move between beaches and volcanic landscapes, waterfalls and ranches, historic towns and Native Hawaiian cultural sites, farmers markets and contemporary restaurants. Regular subjects include island news and events, places to visit, dining, travel tips and deals, and photography that showcases the islands' scenery. By treating each island separately and seriously, the magazine encourages visitors to look beyond a single resort corridor and understand Hawaii as a chain of different communities set in the Pacific.
Food, Culture and Authentic Experience
Food is a central doorway in HAWAIʻI Magazine's storytelling, from traditional Hawaiian dishes and the islands' multiethnic local food culture — shaped by Native Hawaiian, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Portuguese, and other influences — to contemporary chefs, shave ice stands, food trucks, and bakeries. Culture coverage similarly reaches beyond entertainment listings to hula, Hawaiian language and place names, music, crafts, festivals, and the histories embedded in heiau, missions, plantations, and small towns. The editorial promise is rooted storytelling: travel writing that explains why a place matters to the people who live there, uses Hawaiian words such as ʻohana (family) and mālama with care, and helps visitors appreciate the rich culture and history behind the scenery they have come to see.
Travel Guidance and Respectful Tourism
Practical help remains a core service. HAWAIʻI Magazine educates travellers and helps them prepare for a visit: understanding weather and seasons, choosing between islands, planning activities on land and water, finding locally recommended places to eat and stay, and learning the etiquette of visiting sensitive natural and cultural sites. In recent years that guidance has carried an increasingly explicit responsibility message — to respect the place and the people, to care for beaches, reefs, and trails, and to support the local community rather than treating the islands as a backdrop. This emphasis mirrors wider debate in Hawaii about the balance between tourism's economic importance and its pressures on housing, infrastructure, and the environment, and the magazine presents mindful travel as the way its readers can be part of a better balance.
Print, Digital and Social Platforms
Although founded as a print magazine, HAWAIʻI now operates as a multi-platform brand. The print publication remains the showcase for long features and photography, while hawaiimagazine.com publishes news, travel ideas, dining coverage, and planning resources on a continuous cycle. Email newsletters carry that coverage directly to subscribers, and social media extends the magazine's photography and storytelling to a daily audience, many of whom are between trips. A mobile app edition has also been offered for the magazine through its publisher. For a title whose readers are geographically scattered — most do not live in Hawaii — this digital ecosystem is essential: it keeps the magazine present in readers' lives year-round, not only when an issue arrives or a holiday is booked.
Hawaii Magazine and HONOLULU Magazine: Telling Them Apart
Because they share a publisher, a city, and a subject, HAWAIʻI Magazine and HONOLULU Magazine are frequently mistaken for one another, and a clear profile should separate them. HONOLULU is the resident's city magazine, addressing island readers about their own dining, politics, schools, and neighbourhoods. HAWAIʻI, established in 1984 and published from Southern California until 2007, is the traveller's magazine, introducing and re-introducing the islands to an audience that largely lives elsewhere. Their coexistence under aio Media Group gives Honolulu a paired media offering unusual for a market of Hawaii's size: one magazine that helps residents understand home, and another that helps the world approach that home thoughtfully.
Hawaii Magazine Today
Today HAWAIʻI Magazine continues from Honolulu as a print and digital travel and culture publication, published by aio Media Group and found online at hawaiimagazine.com. More than forty years after its establishment in 1984, and well over a decade after its move from Southern California to Hawaii, it remains defined by the invitation on its about page: experience the real Hawaii. Its stories continue to share what makes the islands alluring and unique — beaches and volcanoes, food and festivals, small towns and sacred places — while urging the million-plus readers it reaches each month to travel with respect, to care for the islands, and to seek the authentic experiences that lie beyond the postcard view.
