solving over-tourism in Hawaii - and reaching 250% of projected first-year revenue.
as part of Hawaii’s destination-management efforts, Rivi helped build the digital reservation infrastructure used to manage visitor demand at major parks and attractions - controlling visitor volumes, reducing congestion and environmental pressure, improving the experience for residents + travelers, and giving operators better data and tools to manage capacity.
the challenge: managing demand at Hawaii’s most visited places.
Hawaii attracts millions of visitors, but much of that demand concentrates around a smaller number of highly popular landmarks and parks. at locations such as Diamond Head, high visitor volumes contributed to congestion, heavy foot traffic and pressure on the surrounding environment and communities.
Hawaii’s destination-management plans called for a more controlled system: visitors would reserve entry and parking in advance, while operators could limit capacity and better understand when and how destinations were being used.
Rivi was brought in to help build the technology behind that system.
building the reservation ecosystem.
Rivi developed the technology to support reservations across 83 parks and destinations - scheduling, ticketing, parking reservations and payments.
this wasn’t a single consumer website: it was interconnected experiences for five different user groups, all sharing the same underlying reservation and operational data.
from an online reservation to the park gate.
the platform became part of how visitor access was managed in the physical world. at destinations where reservations became mandatory, travelers reserved entry before arrival - and on-site teams validated those reservations digitally in seconds.
this connected the online experience directly with capacity management at the destination itself.
measurable operating impact.
the platform scaled from launch to more than 100,000 monthly active users - and in its first year generated approximately 250% of the revenue originally projected, while supporting Hawaii’s broader destination-management objectives.
more than a ticketing system.
what started as a reservation requirement became shared digital infrastructure for managing tourism across Hawaii’s parks and destinations.
Rivi’s work covered product definition, backend + cloud development, web applications, mobile applications, reservation + payment flows, and the systems connecting the different user groups.
the result: technology that connects a digital reservation decision with what actually happens at the destination - helping Hawaii manage tourism more deliberately, at scale.
the reservation requirement made global news.
the shift to advance reservations at Hawaii’s best-known destinations was covered widely as travelers adjusted to a new way of visiting.