Last Wednesday, a day after the wildfires, the county asked visitors to leave Lahaina and the island as a whole as soon as possible.
Officials soon urged people to avoid the island entirely, except for essential travel. “In the days and weeks ahead, our collective resources and attention must be focused on the recovery of residents and communities that were forced to evacuate,” the Hawaii Tourism Authority said.
Many travellers heeded the advice. In the immediate aftermath of the fires, some 46,000 people left the island.
But thousands did not. Some ignored requests to leave Maui immediately, while others flew in after the fire - decisions that have angered some.
“If this was happening to your hometown, would you want us to come?” said resident Chuck Enomoto. “We need to take care of our own first.”
Have you been to Hawaii lately?
The locals aren’t benefitting from tourism. They’re being exploited working minimum wage in tourist supporting jobs, living in much poorer conditions than the tourists on the resorts.
Their economy could use some scaling back and making it less of a tourist destination. But unfortunately we all know the resorts are just waiting until the instant they can start building on the land that just burned down.
Tourism isn’t the reason housing is so expensive in Hawaii, it’s because it’s an extremely desirable place to live. Reducing tourism without changing anything else wouldn’t help.
Yes, that’s very true. However I’d argue that tourism perpetuates a lot of cycles of poverty on the island.
Reducing tourism very likely won’t change anything, you’re very right there, but it was a large contributor in bringing it to the point it’s at now.