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Can Hawaii Have Tourism Without Hawaiians?

At the end of my just finished two-week trip to Hawaii, I spent several days in Honolulu near Waikiki Beach. The weather was warm and people wore Aloha shrts while strolling along Kalakaua Avenue. But, for the most part, Waikiki looked and felt like Touristville, America. Theme restaurants abounded. Japanese tourists traveled in packs. And, alas, native Hawaiians were few and far between. It’s a typical phenomenon—people are drawn to a place, then the commercial rush to serve those visitors often corrupts, destroys or simply pushes out the native culture that attracted them in the first place.

Honolulu makes a fine case study, and Peter Apo of the Native Hawaiian Hospitality Association uses it in an opinion piece in Sunday’s Honolulu Advertiser. “As a people, Hawaiians are continually disappointed when we try to confront the realities of Hawai’i's contemporary visitor industry landscape,” Apo writes. “Hawai’i's hospitality paradigm is a model of exclusion of the host culture and far from the Hawaiian cultural model of ho’okipa (hospitality).”

Apo explores how modern Hawaiian tourism evolved, and how it affects locals. “It’s unfortunate that of all the players, the host communities have the smallest voice and are not necessarily the direct beneficiaries of tourism. Yet they are the ones being asked to share themselves, their families and their lives with unrelenting waves of strangers. For the most part, they have no choice but to live in tourism’s onslaught and in its wake.”

Resentment is palpable just a half-mile off Waikiki. I visited a locally owned shop, whose proprietor told me not to eat at the restaurants in Waikiki because the “food will make you sick.” She suggested I go to a Hawaiian restaurant up the street “past the evil Starbucks” or, if we had time, to drive across the island to her hometown, Kailua. That, she said, is where one can find a more laid back, friendly Oahu.

I went and had a great time. However, abandoning Waikiki isn’t a solution Apo advocates in his piece: “Not only is Waikiki not beyond redemption, but it is our kuleana as the host culture to recapture it, to take care of it, to nurture it, to be part of the solution and to respect our ancestors by not abandoning them.”

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Photos Courtesy:  REUTERS  |  iStockPhoto  |  flickr  

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