This Week Hawaii Marks 60 Years with Digital Expansion, New Tracking Tools for Advertisers
Hawaii's longest-running visitor publication celebrates its 60th anniversary by launching enhanced digital tracking tools and expanding its hybrid print-digital model across four island editions.
Six decades after its founding in 1966, This Week Hawaii, the state's largest visitor publication distribution network, is marking its 60th anniversary with the launch of an expanded hybrid media initiative that deepens the brand's reach across all four island editions and introduces enhanced digital tracking tools for its advertising partners.
Founded as a simple print magazine placed in the hands of arriving travelers, This Week Hawaii has grown into a multi-platform resource producing more than 1,300 pages of curated content annually across Oahu, Maui, Big Island, and Kauai. The anniversary milestone coincides with the release of new digital capabilities that allow businesses to track engagement and measure advertising performance through QR codes and other digital placements integrated into the print editions.
"Reaching this 60-year milestone is a reflection of the trust that travelers and local businesses have placed in us since 1966," said Ed Chung, General Manager of This Week Hawaii. "With more than 1,300 pages of editorial content distributed across four islands and a digital platform that launched 20 years ago, we have spent six decades earning the right to call ourselves Hawaii's visitor guide — and we do not take that lightly."
The publication, now part of the Hagadone Media Group, launched its digital platform, thisweekhawaii.com, in 2005, creating an integrated model where both print and digital operate in parallel. Today, print editions continue to be distributed through airports, hotels, resorts, and visitor centers across the state. Each placement includes QR codes that connect readers directly to digital content, enabling businesses to track engagement in ways traditional print alone never allowed.
One of the structural distinctions of This Week Hawaii is its commitment to island-specific storytelling. Rather than producing a single statewide publication, the brand maintains four print editions — Oahu, Maui, Big Island, and Kauai — each supported by locally embedded editorial teams who live and work within the communities they cover. This approach ensures that a traveler picking up the Kauai edition receives content shaped by people who understand the Na Pali Coast differently than someone writing from Honolulu or the mainland.
For the businesses that have partnered with This Week Hawaii across generations — family-run restaurants, activity operators, cultural experiences — this hybrid model offers continuity alongside evolution. Travelers who visited Hawaii in the 1970s may have carried a copy of This Week Hawaii in their bags; their children and grandchildren now access the same institution through a smartphone.
As This Week Hawaii enters its seventh decade, the brand's editorial teams across the four islands continue the work that began in 1966: helping visitors find their footing in one of the most distinct places on Earth, and connecting them with the people and places that make each island worth returning to.