Memorializing money-making?

The USS Arizona Memorial is Hawaii’s most visited site, drawing nearly 1.8 million visitors annually. The memorial’s maximum capacity is 4,350 people per day, all of which are ferried to the sunken battleship that lies in the middle of Pearl Harbor and holds the remains of nearly 1,000 United States sailors who died on December 7, 1941.

The National Park Service (NPS) operates the memorial under a statute that forbids charging an entrance fee. This means that those 4,350 passes are granted on a first come, first served basis.

But an internal review conducted by the NPS has found that a majority of these free passes to this historic site are being “snapped up” by commercial tour operators before everyday visitors can obtain them. These commercial tour operators typically charge between $50 and $130 per customer for their tours, making aquistion of these free passes highly profitable for tour operators.

In the report, which was obtained by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) under the Freedom of Information Act and released today, the NPS review panel concludes that the total absence of any “written policies, standard operating procedures or operational plans” governing ticket distribution created “ample opportunities for abuse” in which the availability of tickets is “determined primarily by demand from commercial tour operators.” The NPS report goes on to say that on many days “very few first-come, first served tickets were available to visitors” under a system which park staff and others admit was not “transparent, fair and equitable.”

“The park has created a secondary market for the ticket inventory” in which tickets reserved for various purposes are corralled by tour operators and exchanged or resold with no controls, according to the report. “Currently the Park does not track how many of the first-come, first served tickets are actually distributed to individuals and how many go to commercial operators. Neither does it track the breakdown between various commercial operators.” Additionally, the report states that, “[T]here are no management controls in place for operations within the park gates. The reviewers reported a ‘Bazaar like’ atmosphere” as park staff “expressed concerns related to degradation of the visitor experience due to over commercialization and lack of control of the interpretive messages being shared with visitors.”

The review team declared that its purpose “was not to investigate individual conduct,” but did note several allegations of misconduct that were reported to them during the review including that, “A number of interviewees believe that park staff and the park association (PHP) [the park friends group called Pacific Historic Parks] are involved in actions related to tickets that may be unethical” such as receiving “gifts from commercial operators.” Additionally, the report noted that, “Some employees, both within the NPS and PHP, expressed fear of retribution for speaking out” and that “[m]ultiple interviewees stated being told to ‘mind your own business.’”

The NPS released a “Corrective Action Plan” to address the fact that, “Ticket Reservation and Distribution Practices are not in compliance with NPS Policies and Standards.” Many of the actions in the plan were slated for completion by June 30, 2014, although several remain under development.

Within the report, NPS identified no record of any disciplinary action taken but instead appears to be treating the situation as a breakdown in “internal communications,” leading them to prescribe various team-building exercises and making employees review a 30 minute “ethics video with a ‘site specific’ skit.”