David Shapiro: We need more than talk about managing Hawaii tourism

There appears to be broad agreement among the public and political leaders that the record 10 million visitors to Hawaii in 2019 was near the maximum we can comfortably handle, and that we must better manage tourism to preserve our quality of life.

But the muddled actions of our local government are leading us in the opposite direction.

We hosted 9.25 million visitors in 2022 even without the return of most of the 1.5 million Japanese who visited Hawaii each year before the COVID-19 pandemic. The expected return of the Asian market could push us to new records.

Attempts to control vacation rentals in our neighborhoods have been contentious, and new hotels are being built and proposed all around Oahu.

The Hawaii Tourism Authority tried to tilt more toward visitor management than marketing, but the agency has been rendered impotent by years of being jerked around by the Legislature and Ige administration on its budget and contracting.

Now lawmakers are considering bills to abolish the agency altogether, returning us to square one in managing tourism as it surges unfettered and in all directions.

According to a recent story in the Honolulu Star- Advertiser, we’re in the midst of a new hotel boom unseen since the 1970s, with more than a dozen Oahu projects in the construction or late planning pipeline — and most of them outside the established tourism footprints of Waikiki, Ko Olina and Turtle Bay.

There are several projects in downtown Honolulu, more hotels going up in Kapolei, one in Ewa Beach, a project at Hawaii Koa Ridge in Central Oahu and several in the Kapiolani Boulevard corridor that used favorable transit-oriented development waivers to build around the now- nonexistent Ala Moana Center rail station.

There will almost certainly be more; it seems no public development can be done on Oahu anymore without a hotel component, as elected officials endlessly cater to development and construction interests that lard their campaigns with so much cash they’re virtually invulnerable to challenge.

The murky public-private partnership to build a New Aloha Stadium Entertainment District seems an excuse to surround a needed stadium with one or more unneeded hotels and other visitor attractions.

The Legislature shelved badly needed roof repairs at the Hawai‘i Convention Center to turn the simple project into another convoluted public-private partnership that includes a hotel.

Even a proposed law enforcement training facility in Central Oahu includes a hotel.

Obviously, there’s a disconnect here. If we’re serious about managing the growth of tourism, we don’t need a ton of new hotels — especially outside the existing tourism areas. It makes no sense to work so hard to drive vacation rentals out of residential districts only to have hotels move in and continue disrupting the lives of those who live there.

If we don’t quickly agree to and execute a workable plan to manage the impact of tourism, millions more annual visitors could be locked in above our reasonable carrying capacity.

As always with political leadership, we must watch what they do, not what they say.

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.