Jason Momoa urged followers to not travel to Maui amid the devastation from the wildfires, saying people should "not convince" themselves they're needed.
Yeah, every touristy place hates tourists. Who wouldn’t? They’re noisy, they crowd the beaches and sights and restaurants. Everybody hates tourists…until they stop showing up. It turns out that tourist dollars are pretty intimately connected with tourists.
If you’d actually bothered reading any of those, you would have realise that that wasn’t actually true (almost none of the money actually goes to the natives and nor do many of the jobs), but sure, keep your head in the sand, I hear it’s cosy, just like the fantasy that you know better than the people actually living there.
Tourist money doesn’t go into a hotel employee’s pocket and just sit there forever. Employees involved in the tourist industry buy food, clothing, and entertainment, and hire plumbers and painters and construction workers, and pay taxes, which in turn fund schools and roads and emergency services (like, say, firefighters).
You can’t get rid of tourism and the 25% of GDP it represents, and just go on with the same quality of life.
But I mean, if Hawaiian want to stop tourism, they should vote to stop tourism. There’s nothing stopping them from banning hotels or whatever.
I think there’s a strong argument for traveling there to spend tourist dollars and help them recover economically.
But like…not when the fires are still raging out of control, maybe? You’ll just be in the way.
These aren’t from this current crisis, but I have a feeling the sentiments haven’t changed much:
https://mymodernmet.com/lily-hiilani-okimura-hawaii-tourism/
https://www.irreview.org/articles/hawaii-tourism-opposite-of-a-paradise-for-locals
https://taiswim.co/blogs/bikini-blog/why-you-should-not-come-to-hawaii-for-your-next-vacation
Yeah, every touristy place hates tourists. Who wouldn’t? They’re noisy, they crowd the beaches and sights and restaurants. Everybody hates tourists…until they stop showing up. It turns out that tourist dollars are pretty intimately connected with tourists.
If you’d actually bothered reading any of those, you would have realise that that wasn’t actually true (almost none of the money actually goes to the natives and nor do many of the jobs), but sure, keep your head in the sand, I hear it’s cosy, just like the fantasy that you know better than the people actually living there.
Tourist money doesn’t go into a hotel employee’s pocket and just sit there forever. Employees involved in the tourist industry buy food, clothing, and entertainment, and hire plumbers and painters and construction workers, and pay taxes, which in turn fund schools and roads and emergency services (like, say, firefighters).
You can’t get rid of tourism and the 25% of GDP it represents, and just go on with the same quality of life.
But I mean, if Hawaiian want to stop tourism, they should vote to stop tourism. There’s nothing stopping them from banning hotels or whatever.
We need the hotel rooms for displaced residents and support personnel arriving to help with the efforts.