Honolulu - As a record number of visitors stream into Hawaii, state officials want residents to know: Tourism is your friend.
The agency that promotes travel to Hawaii is starting an online video campaign to remind locals about the benefits of the state’s biggest employer.
The first instalment features Honolulu chef Mark Noguchi talking about his brother-in-law’s job at a Waikiki restaurant and his uncle’s work building resorts. He closes the 30-second video saying: “Take care of tourism. It’s a family business.”
The campaign is aimed at showing tourism helps a broad cross-section of the state, not just those who work in hotels or in jobs directly in the industry, said Leslie Dance, the Hawaii Tourism Authority’s vice-president for marketing and product development.
“People sometimes forget how important tourism is and start lamenting there are too many people around, particularly when business is good,” she said.
But not everyone in Hawaii is on board. Critics say the industry offers poorly paid jobs and exploits Hawaiian culture. But many complaints are about increased traffic and congestion.
The campaign comes as the state tries to maintain the momentum that brought a record 8.6 million travellers last year, the fourth-straight year of record-breaking arrivals. Industry officials attribute the growth to an increase in flights and Hawaii’s enduring popularity with global travellers.
Online review sites such as Yelp are directing tourists to restaurants, hikes and beaches in residential areas where travellers rarely ventured decades ago. Websites such as Airbnb also allow more visitors to spend the night in homes instead of Waikiki hotels, even when most Oahu holiday rentals are illegal under county law.
Rena Risso, a 30-year-old who was born and raised in Kailua, understands the positive aspects of tourism, but believes they are outweighed by the negatives.
“I think, from the locals’ point of view, it’s humbug,” she said. “I can’t even take my kids to the beach on a weekend because it’s so crazy.”
The tourism agency should do more than promote “uncritical support for the growth of tourism”, said Jonathan Osorio, a professor of Hawaiian studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. It should be required to consider the long-range effects of continued growth on resources and society, he said.
“The admonishment that we should take care of tourism because it’s a family business is a slick seduction that wants to avert the public’s attention from the industry’s abuses,” Osorio said .
Dance called the campaign an inexpensive, grass-roots way to have a conversation. The videos cost $18 000 (about R258 900) each and are posted on the tourism authority’s YouTube channel.
The second clip shows Renee Kimura, of Kimura Lauhala Shop, discussing how tourists support the Big Island store that her great-grandfather founded a century ago.
The next video will be filmed on Kauai. People should be reminded of tourism’s benefits so they’ll treat visitors well and encourage them to return, said Henry Maumalanga, a hotel security guard.
“Tourists come here because of the aloha spirit and all of that. They hear about all that kind of stuff,” he said. “And we got to show it.”
For Amanda Corby Noguchi, an event planner who appears in the first video alongside her husband, tourism is a way to teach people about Hawaii.
Her husband has taken visiting friends and other travellers to fish ponds and taro patches in Heeia to show them how Grouese are reviving traditional forms of Hawaiian agriculture.
“It’s an opportunity to educate people about what real Hawaii is, and what matters,” she said.
AP