What happens when the dog at last catches its tail? Which is to ask: What happens when the Hawaii Tourism Authority (HTA) updates its strategic plan that dethrones marketing as its top priority in favor of the Hawaiian malama — calling on inward-looking Indigenous wisdom to redirect tourism and only then marketing the plan that results?
The update of the HTA 2020–2025 Plan that was published immediately after Maui wildfires that this month devastated the former seat of Hawaiian royalty, Lahaina, is emphatic about its new direction. It must “Place resident interests and benefits first.”
The plan also acknowledges that ”tourism requires a re-balancing of priorities away from its continuous drive to increase visitor numbers that has taken its toll on our natural environment and people, the very reason visitors travel to our islands. . .
“[D]ifferent now is the greater emphasis and additional resources being directed to community benefits, Hawaiian culture, workforce training, and other destination concerns.”
HTA does recognize that “this balance point will be a moving target over time.”
The procrastination of “over time”
This attitude pervades everything from how water distribution occurs to how, according to the tourism update, its emphasis on ”Place resident interests and benefits first” will play out.
We know how water hydrants malfunctioned and then barely trickled water out in the face of the Lahaina wipeout. Priority for agricultural use is supposed to prefer the growing of food for local consumption. Yet in the aftermath of the water supply failure that resulted in the dismissal of the county’s emergency administrator, Gov. Josh Green has suggested a reprioritizing of water allocations that native Hawaiians fear will mean the end of their priority.
Green is already under fire for widely inconsistent message-making that veers from telling tourists to leave Maui, from telling them to come back to all parts of the island able to accommodate them, to postponing their return until October 11, a date that goes without explanation. HTA dutifully lines up with the zig zags. Hotel workers who go without pay are furious. The market is confused. Airlines cancel weeks worth of flights.
Further, two weeks after the firestorm, The New York Times reports that a native farmer of native taro saw his well run dry while a Canadian pension fund has been allowed to lease and irrigate 41,000 acres to grow premium exports of limes, macadamia nuts, coffee and other export crops. That’s roughly a third of a total 120,632 acres in planted crops in 2020.
The pervasive foot-dragging of colonial capitalism, a term that Time magazine applies to Maui and Hawaii’s overall inability to save itself from itself has been a topic spelled out by many sources since the turn of the century.
Foot-dragging that in our moment became lethal was warned of
A study of tourism from 2005 told of “growing ‘Americanization’ of Hawai’i, the reduction of both provincialism and unique local character“ as a threat from tourism impacts.
Publication in 2012 of the Maui County General Plan 2030 (incorporated into the HTA Plan by reference) in Ch. 2 tells about the need to protect Heritage Resources through a system of critical land protection and across watersheds. bound up with “pervasive American popular culture [that generates] rapid growth and development that compromise everything that contributes to a high quality of life.”
“Their protection as well as multi-ethnic cultural heritage and the spirit of aloha culture is a key challenge that will persist into the future.”
Indigenous leader Kaniela Ing, who served three terms in the state legislature, is also a director of the Green New Deal. I quote from his article titled Indigenous Leadership for Transformative Climate Action that appeared Nov. 21 in yes! [sic], a Denver online magazine that gives voice to the global voiceless. Ing was bitterly fought by tourism’s establishment when he ran for Congress in 2018 and was defeated in the Democratic primary.
”Climate justice requires us to radically restore our relationship with the natural world around us and transform our political and economic systems to support this deep cultural change. No one is better equipped to lead this vision than the Indigenous People who have maintained reciprocal relationships with their homelands for millennia.
“Please note that when I say “lead,” I mean at a level unseen in modern politics thus far.
“Indigenous communities are disproportionately impacted by the climate crisis because we maintain the closest ties to our natural environment. For the same reason, we are the closest to the solutions. It is foolish to relegate us to consultatory roles. We should sit at the head of the table, driving the work and leading the way — not just as a matter of justice, but of utmost practicality. Indigenous leaders hold the highest potential to save us all.”
Go-slow on climate action
At a time when national traveler surveys show overwhelming support for tourism to accelerate climate action that some travelers are willing to pay more for, Hawaii goes no further than by repositioning its brand.
But like all major hotel brands elsewhere, those that call the shots on Maui are part of the global accommodations sector that is the least willing to engage in transparent climate action
Moreover, doing so while plantation-scale resorts by the sea remain expatriate owned and dominate the use of room taxes to sell a version of Hawaii that carves up native culture as décor, entertainment, menu choices and a native wish to please despite the distortions that such work requires. No homerun. Maybe a scratch single.
This is also the year when the dissatisfaction by workers, joined by Native Hawaiians across Maui and tradition-keeping nonprofits won at least a nominal victory in the state legislature that shut down funding for the HTA. Overseas hotel corporations right away had legislative defunding postponed for at least a year.
Beat of Hawaii/Hawaii Travel News in February detailed the uncertainties faced by the shift in priorities. These only start with most of the money spent on Hawaii vacations never reaching the islands at all. “For the large part, it ends up feathering the pockets of big companies with little to some Hawaii connection.”
As many point out, mainland tourism interests compete with locals for scarce resources — for food, water, land use, road use and parking, for hospital beds and for seats on decision-making bodies about where roads get built.
Hawaii has even been called the “extinction capital of the world” for the number of species that have gone extinct or are at high risk of dying out.
Hawaii may have a star on the American flag but it’s as different from mainland America as independent Antigua and Barbuda or St. Lucia in the Caribbean.
Obfuscation notwithstanding, the update indicates aspects of leisure travel configured as climate action that destinations elsewhere might adapt in this time of climate-induced upheaval.
Next week: how Maui vacations from the mainland are playing out.
NOTES
https://www.hawaiitourismauthority.org/media/4286/hta-strategic-plan-2020-2025.pdf, pp. 18, 24, 26
https://www.mauicounty.gov/DocumentCenter/View/10491/Preliminary-Draft-TDR-PDR-Report?bidId=
ibid
https://hdoa.hawaii.gov/blog/main/agbaselineupdate/#:~:text=With%20the%20Maui%20County%20data,acres%20or%20minus%2021%20percent https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/20/us/maui-hawaii-water-supply.html
https://beatofhawaii.com/hawaii-visitors-left-reeling-by-up-to-300-cost-increases/
https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/18/us/hawaii-tourism-impact-united-shades-cec/index.html
https://beatofhawaii.com/hawaii-visitors-left-reeling-by-up-to-300-cost-increases/
