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.”
They hate tourists? I wonder how they would feel if their economy crumbled from no tourists.
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.
Stfu colonizer.
You don’t have to like it but it’s still reality. And what kind of insult is that? LMAO
As it is with most things, the average local is not benefitting from the commercialization of their communities as much as external corporations and wealthy investors.
I disagree. Tourists bring money that goes into sales tax and local businesses that are staffed by average locals.
That would be neat if the businesses were actually owned by the locals, rather than rich fucks like Larry Edison
Then you would just have a few wealthy on the island? Unless you think they would actually pay or hire differently.
I would much rather not have any rich fuck owning >90% of the island. Thank you very much.
What is it was a local rich fuck? Seems like the whole “outsider” thing is the issue.
“What if it…”. Bro, just stop. They are both bad, but having a complete outsider own your island is by far the worse one.
Let’s see … chose rebuilding an important historical and cultural center of Native Hawaiians - and provide temporary shelter, food and money until the rebuild is complete - vs cater to rich assholes who own most of Hawaii or just want to visit, even tho 106 are confirmed dead with only 27% of the disaster area searched?
Choose people over economy every gd time.
Isn’t that the sort of depency that would breed distrust and other negative feelings?
So it would seem…