56
Mauna Kea Beach Resort,
set just above the coastline
on the island of Hawaii,
are busy once again, hav-
ing settled into a new pan-
demic paradigm. Tennis
pro Wayne Barnes uses
a pair of tongs to deliver
red licorice strips, treats
for the pint-size players
who’ve completed their
30-minute lesson. He tries
to keep the kids from crowding closely, then looks over his
shoulder toward a group of teens arriving for the next ses-
sion. “Keep your masks on until you’re on the court,” he calls
out, then makes sure each has an orange bracelet indicating
that they passed a temperature check.
Over the winter holidays, Barnes’s tennis clinics were the
busiest they’d been since the novel coronavirus went global.
Then again, anything would be an uptick from basically zero.
When Covid-19 struck, the Aloha State instituted one of the
country’s strictest lockdowns, blocking international travel
and effectively halting domestic tourism by requiring incom-
ing passengers to quarantine for 14 days. Hotels closed, con-
dos shuttered, and the verdant archipelago—where at least
a quarter of all jobs are connected to the tourism industry—
saw its unemployment rate rise from less than 4%, the low-
est in the country, to 15%, one of the highest.
Hawaii’s cautious reopening began in October, but much
of the world is just not ready for leisure travel: Almost 1 mil-
lion visitors descended on the islands in December 2019; in
December 2020 the number was less than 250,000.
For the most part, residents have been serious about the
virus. Some of that is because of island life, a sense that
everyone is in it together, and the knowledge that, if the sit-
uation got truly severe, there are no neighboring states to
rely on when you’re 2,400 miles out to sea.
History has also been a factor. During the 19th century
an estimated 90% of Hawaii’s native population was killed
by diseases brought to the islands by outsiders. The state
knows—and fears—pandemics, and its aggressive counter-
measures, while hardly perfect, have worked so far. As of
Feb. 17, Hawaii has the lowest rate of Covid cases of any
state (1,896 per 100,000) and the lowest seven-day average
of new cases (48).
The economic cost of these preventative measures, how-
ever, has been devastating. In 2019, 10.4 million visitors to
Hawaii delivered more than $2 billion in state tax revenue.
Fewer than 2 million people visited in 2020, and most of
those were during the first two months of the year. The state
is now predicting a $1.4 billion shortfall in each of the next
four years, and budget slashing has already begun.
But needing travelers back and wanting them back are
different things. It’s been a tense topic on the islands for
decades. The shift from “a tourism economy to a tourismsociety,” as Noel Kent, author of Hawaii: Islands Under the
Influence, recently put it, has been pushing the limits of liv-
ability in some areas. Families need three, even four jobs to
make ends meet because of the state’s cost of living—the high-
est in the nation, according to research from the Missouri
Economic Research and Information Center. On the North
Shore of Oahu, some residents don’t leave their homes on
weekends because of the traffic. Strategic planners on Kauai
are talking about a “tipping point” in terms of visitors’ impact.
Resident sentiment is conflicted. According to a 2018
study by the Hawaii Tourism Authority, 59% of people sur-
veyed said the benefits of tourism outweigh the costs. And
yet, two-thirds of those same respondents said they think
their home island is “being run for tourists at the expense
of local people.”
This last year gave a glimpse of what life could be like
without tourists, and for those who didn’t lose their jobs
during the pandemic—or did but found sufficient financial
stability through state and federal unemployment programs—
the past 12 months in Hawaii have been magical.
At normally bustling Hapuna Beach State Park on the
west coast of Hawaii Island, for instance, you could swim or
stroll without seeing more than a few others. Choked trails
such as the route to the summit of famed Diamond Head on
Oahu thinned out. At Hanauma Bay, a popular snorkel spot,
researchers found that the park’s closure led to an increase in
marine life and improved the health of the lagoon’s ecosystem.
The man in charge of finding the middle ground between
reclaiming the islands for residents and bringing back
tourists is John De Fries, who was named president and
chief executive officer of the Hawaii Tourism Authority in
September. He says that in a given week, he’ll hear from
people who think the state should limit visitors to 6 million
a year, and others who think Hawaii can handle 12 million
or even 15 million a year.
Committing to a specific number probably doesn’t make
sense; tourism’s effects vary widely depending on behavior,
management, and enforcement. Paul Brewbaker, an econom-
ics consultant who closely tracks tourism data, is critical of
both camps, but especially the antitourism crowd. He says
their approach is more emotional, less empirical, and pre-
empts “serious discussion of economic policy interventions
because, presumptively, less”—as in fewer tourists—“is more.”
De Fries, likewise, isn’t thinking only in terms of num-
bers. His strategy is focused on the popularity of so-called
voluntourism. As the first native Hawaiian tapped to run
the tourism authority, De Fries is sensitive about the idea of
responsibility to future generations. He grew up not far from
Waikiki, where he fished and learned the old traditions with
family, while also watching that corner of Oahu grow into
the hotel, shopping, and dining playground that it is today.
To strike a healthier balance between tourism and resi-
dents, he uses the word malama, which is Hawaiian for pro-
tect or nurture. “It is the sister cultural value to aloha,” he
says. Bringing malama into practice begins by linking hotelsTRAVEL Bloomberg Pursuits March 1, 2021W h e n e v e r
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