An Important PSA about Hawaii!

This week we’re gonna skew from what was becoming our norm and talk about a more pressing issue. Y’all need to let Hawaii chill for a bit.

If you’ve been living under a rock or something let me recap. On August 8th a wildfire was reported in the historic resort town of Lahaina located on the island of Maui in Hawaii. As a result of the fire it is estimated over 100 lives have been lost, hundreds of acres burnt and an entire island has been ravaged. This has been the worst US wildfire in the last 100 years. Luckily it seems that the worst of it has passed and much of the focus can be on rebuilding.

This is where our Public Service Announcement comes in. I’ll repeat it for those in the back. Let Hawai Chill!

What does that mean necessarily? Well, normally Hawaii is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world especially for US Citizens. From a 2019 report, it was estimated about $17 billion is spent yearly in Hawaii related to tourism. The estimate can be summed to saying that tourism accounts for 20-23% of Hawaii’s economy. While that is a good chunk of the state’s economy coming from people who aren’t permanent residents. When you visit Hawaii or hear about it from other places you might actually think that Hawaii really needs tourism to survive at all, which is far from the truth. 77% of the state’s economy does not need tourism at all but the hospitality industry won’t tell you that. So to circle back to our point again. Travel elsewhere for a bit instead of Hawaii, so the island of Maui can recover.

Tourism is one if not the biggest resource drain and destroyer of Hawaii’s natural state. Locals can barely survive as is due to the hammer that tourism knocks through the entire region. Housing prices are way above what locals can afford due to hotels being scattered throughout the island. Then you have the drain on local supplies, such as water, produce, and trash usage that comes with having millions of visitors per year. Then you factor in hotels and tourists having a general disregard for the islands overall you can easily see why many locals in Hawaii actually don’t like tourism all that much.

This video here sums up exactly why tourism needs to be on hold in Hawaii. The lady in the video states the tourists were swimming in the exact same water that local Hawaiians had just perished in only a day before. There is two Hawaii. One is the reality where a small resource-drained island nation needs help and the other is a fantasy where people come to visit to flick a pick and leave without giving any worry about what’s going on there. Newsflash is people can’t live in a fantasy. We need to face reality. As much as I also love an island dream vacation. You can’t go on the dream vacation if there’s no island to go to.

No one can force you to not go on vacation if you still have it all mapped out and surely the hotel chains scattered across the island chain won’t stop you. They still have bottom lines to hit and shareholders to please. Hawaii is just their cash cow. Ask all the people who’ve received calls asking to buy some newly renovated land in Maui.