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The Hawaii Tourism Authority (HTA) was created in 1998. Tourists were well aware of Hawaii prior to that. In 1997, visitors to Hawaii totaled 6.7 million. If the HTA did not exist, millions of visitors would still come here. We don’t need an HTA.
Changing the focus of HTA sounds impressive, but meaningless words like “destination management” and “regenerative tourism” are akin to just rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic. Get rid of it. We don’t need more tourists. We need fewer tourists, a diversified economy and better jobs.
The recent Census data shows that in 2022, Hawaii ranked No. 4 in the country in terms of the rate of net outmigration. People are being priced out of paradise. Only New York, Illinois and Louisiana are worse. A tourist-based economy cannot support the state with the nation’s highest cost of living.
Bert Oshiro
Hawaii Kai
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