Is Kauai’s Aloha Spirit in Peril?
Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 02.01.08 | 11:42 AM ET
Photo of Napali coast by Tourist visits to Kauai reached record numbers last year: 1.27 million people made the trip to the Garden Island. A slew of construction projects—many around the resorts of Poipu—are in the works. Locals are worrying about the future. Writes Laura Bly in USA Today: “[O]ver the past few years, as tourism kicked into high gear and the island’s 63,000 residents wound down from rebuilding efforts following 1992’s devastating Category 4 Hurricane Iniki, frustration levels have swelled like north shore surf during a winter storm.”
Among locals’ chief concerns are rising real estate prices and traffic on the island’s narrow roads.
An editorial in The Garden Island newspaper noted a recent assault on a visitor, apparently prompted by a traffic accident, and observed:
Maybe aloha is dead. It can be interpreted as an idea whose time has passed. Living aloha is built on the precept that “I welcome you by showing you that all is mine is open to you.” It is a beautiful idea. The problem lies in the fact that the rest of the world has come to Kaua’i.
The island’s mayor put it a little more delicately, telling Bly: “Finding a balance between a good economy and quality of life is where we’re at.”
Long live aloha.