Passengers heading to their international flight out of Honolulu or racing to get to their Uber ride might not realize that they passed by what was once known as “the most elegant lounge at Honolulu airport … a lounge that offers comfort and beauty in a setting that approximates home.”

Like most airport lounges, however, you have to be a member of an exclusive club to enjoy it.

For 60 years, the Governor’s Airport Lounge next to the cultural gardens in Terminal 2 of Daniel K. Inouye International Airport has been the primary venue for greeting and saying farewell to VIPs, including presidents, queens like Elizabeth II, and kings like Elvis.

The facility funded by the state is meant to be an extension of aloha, a buffer from the activity of the airport and a perk that’s available at the discretion of the governor’s office, including for use by family members.

Access to the secure lounge is approved via request of the governor or a visiting official, but other than the guest book which is maintained by the Department of Transportation, no record of the visitors who use it is readily available.

State DOT did not respond to a question about the number of people who use the facility each year, or how much it costs to operate.

The lounge, officially opened in 1967, was used as a venue for media conferences and photo opportunities under the administration of the late Gov. George Ariyoshi and as a backdrop by the airport’s namesake, Sen. Daniel Inouye. 

The venue is referenced numerous times in local news stories from the late 1960s through the early 1980s, but less so recently.

A dedicated “Governor’s Lounge” at an airport is itself a rarity in the United States, with only a handful of similar facilities showing up in internet searches. There are dedicated spaces for arriving foreign officials and diplomats at Washington Dulles, Los Angeles International, and at John F. Kennedy in New York, home to the United Nations.

The nearest equivalent appears to be The Consular Lounge at Miami International Airport, which was set up in 1994 to welcome heads of state flying in for the First Summit of the Americas. It continues to operate as a service to the diplomatic community, according to a recent Miami-Dade County report. 

Local sensitivities about the use of the lounge by a Miami-Dade County Commissioner in 2017 actually triggered an ethics investigation that recommended limiting its use by elected officials.

No such controversy has surfaced here, but as the 1968 Sunday Star Bulletin & Advertiser story about the Honolulu lounge asked: “Who Are All Those Airline VIPs?”

Who Are The VIPs?

A copy of the official lounge guestbook obtained by Civil Beat covers the period January 2020 to the end of August 2025, bridging the last two years of Gov. David Ige’s time in office and the first years of Gov. Josh Green’s administration. 

It also reflects the period of the Covid-19 pandemic when various travel restrictions were in place and VIP traffic was limited. The level of activity it shows is significantly less compared to the five or six times a week it was apparently used after it first opened. 

Many of the approximately 34 entries are hard to decipher — illegible signatures with a federal government department and “Mahalo” or a “Thank You!”

Ige, who took executive office in 2014, is not listed. His daughter Lauren is in there, however, passing through in 2022.

Gov. Josh Green and First Lady Jaime Green first signed the book on a trip to Florida early in his term in April 2023. Their daughter Maia signed in August 2025 when she headed off to college on the mainland. 

Other Green administration staffers past and present are there, including Chief of Staff Brooke Wilson.  

Incoming visitors include officials from the U.S. Department of Transportation, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin and Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins. 

Former Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland wrote in July 2023, “Thank you for sharing your spaces.”

And there’s a smattering of now former governors.

“Live Free Or Die,” New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu wrote in October 2023. Missouri is the “Show Me State,” Gov. Mike Parson reminded us. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed sans a motto. Washington state never codified one.

The guestbook also reflects the state’s strong Pacific links. 

Lou Leon Guerrero, the governor of Guam and her Lt. Gov. Joshua Tenorio are there, as are the president and first lady of the Federated States of Micronesia, Wesley and Ancelly Simina. The former Prime Minister of Tonga Siaosi Sovaleni is also there.

New Zealand’s Minister of Defence Ron Mark in 2020 signed, as did Siobhan Uruamo, a New Zealand medical researcher on respiratory health among the ​​nation’s Māori population in June 2024. 

One name not in the guest book was Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel, who was in Hawaiʻi in August 2025 to meet local agents on a working trip that included a snorkel excursion at Pearl Harbor.

Tea And Sandwiches

The lounge had its origins in the official visit of Queen Elizabeth II in 1963, when the monarch was reported to have “huddled over cups of tea and sandwiches” chatting with Gov. John A. Burns. “She asked about the people of Hawaiʻi, the economy, the tourist industry and the new 24-million-dollar airport,” the Honolulu Star-Bulletin reported. 

But that conversation took place in a lounge on the third floor, Burns’s director of protocol Francis R. Boyles said later, “and you had to go up elevators and through hallways to get to it. It became apparent we needed an appropriate place to welcome important visitors. I suggested the idea of a lounge to the Governor, and he agreed.”

“At the time there was no space available, but when the plans for modernization were drawn up, the lounge was included,” Boyles said.

The exact cost of the buildout of the governor’s lounge is not available, as it was bundled in with other contracts during the major airport terminal expansion. But the DOT’s 1968 report does say how much it cost to decorate it: $15,365 or around $147,048 i in today’s dollars.

Last August, surplus furniture from the Governor’s Lounge surfaced online in a state auction offering a glimpse of the bygone glamor.

A $40 bid appears to have secured one lucky bidder an orange couch and a set of three glass-topped wooden coffee tables.

Other details in historic reporting provide details of slower and more genteel times when the terminals were a place people wanted to hang out.

Boyles said that while the protocols “discourage large planeside greetings,” once in the lounge it was “very informal, but very lovely.”

The lounge has no dedicated staff now, but at one time there were four official multilingual lounge hostesses who worked there.

In its early period, retired Colonel Curtis LeMay, who was the formidable architect of the aerial bombing campaign against Japan during WWII, asked to use the facility to “freshen up” between flights. 

President Gerald Ford and First Lady Betty Ford also got an apparently brief glimpse of it on their way through in 1970. “Fords here today, but gone to Maui,” the headline read.

Queen Elizabeth II did get to check out the new facility that she had helped inspire on at least one occasion when she visited Hawaiʻi again in 1970. 

But, the Star Bulletin reported, her 40-person strong entourage didn’t join her. 

Instead, they enjoyed the hospitality of the luxurious 1,000-square-foot Braniff Airways lounge (now defunct) decorated with artifacts from South America and Mexico overlooking the airport gardens.

In 2017, another VIP space was built in Terminal 1 for interisland transfers for $3.61 million, DOT spokesman Russell Pang said.

Since Sept. 1, 2023 that facility has been leased to Hawaiian Airlines, which pays the state $44,300 a month to rent the space for its own signature VIP lounge.

See the full guest book below.