West Hawaii Today’s headline “Most residents favor tourism” was a big stretch. In fact, the average response to the Hawaii Visitor Bureau survey question, “Please rate tourism as an industry for Hawaii Island with 10 meaning extremely beneficial to the island and 1 meaning not at all beneficial to the island,” was 4.5 out of 10, i.e., less than half seeing it as beneficial.
The taxpayer-funded survey favored the preparer’s desired results. For instance, asking ”What would you say is the most important industry driving hawaii’s economy?” is not the same as, “Do you want more hotels and vacation rentals built on your island?”
Other than quoting council representative Villegas who thankfully questioned the underlying point of the survey, the Hawaii Tribune-Herald article overlooked facts and suggestions provided in public testimony including tourism’s impacts on climate change. For instance, in 2019, Hawaii’s visitors numbered 10.3 million while its resident population was 1.4 million. In the same year, 86% of those traveling by air were tourists. With 10 million visitors that year, that computes to 70 billion passenger miles traveled by visitors to Hawaii, or a total of CO2 emissions from air transport of visitors to Hawaii at 8 million tons.
Meanwhile, residents pay dearly for basic items like food, shelter, and automobiles whose prices are skyrocketing, not just because they need to be shipped here or are inherently expensive, but because of the competition by tourists who are able to pay higher prices than longterm residents can absorb; and the planning and building of resident housing, roads and other infrastructure elude us.
Why do we track how much tourists are spending, but never do a cost-benefit analysis including what we’re paying to support it? The idea of creating an EIS for tourism is good, but how will the value of clean air, open space, and other environmental, social and cultural resources be measured quantitatively against tourism’s costs? Since HVB’s stated goal is to positively shift perception rather than help residents become more self reliant through industries that provide equitable pay, protect natural and environmental resources, and promote a reasonable cost of living, they’re not the entity to help prepare an unbiased study.
Let the hotel industry pay for its own advertising. Hawaii’s natural beauty sells itself. Then we can use our tax dollars to provide services that primarily benefit residents while we get to work creating a more self-sustaining future for Hawaii’s residents.
Janice Palma-Glennie is a resident of Kailua-Kona.