As Maui hotel rooms sit empty after the deadly Hawaii wildfire that devastated Lahaina, some are sounding economic alarms, asking tourists to return.
Lahaina residents and volunteers join hands in prayer at an aid distribution center on Wahinoho Way, Maui, Monday, Aug. 14, 2023.
Paia is half an island away from Lahaina, where the restaurant’s other location was among more than 2,000 structures destroyed in a wildfire this month. But the Paia location was seeing about a fifth of typical sales, said Jimenez. The Maui native and her co-workers were far from the only ones feeling the economic pain.
Trisha Kehaulani Watson, ‘Āina Momona’s co-founder, said the organization absolutely stood by its first message as the right response “in the immediate aftermath” of the fire, when people were still trying to gauge the devastation. Most other tourist hubs outside West Maui are at least a 40-minute drive from the devastation and bear no external sign of the nearby tragedy, save for scattered donation boxes and the void of tourists.In West Maui alone — which previously accounted for about 15% of the tourism across all Hawaiian islands — there is an estimated economic loss of $9 million a day, according Tokioka. West Maui’s hotels remain closed to visitors, with many housing employees displaced by the fires.
Many said they had already seen their shifts or hours cut, and most expressed a desire for travelers to keep visiting other parts of the island. They also spoke about their personal connections to the fires, and their sometimes complicated feelings about the tourist economy. Inside the airport — the island’s primary entry point for visitors from the continental United States — most everyone from the Hawaiian-shirt clad waitress at a restaurant by the airline gates to the clerk ringing up last-minute souvenirs can dolefully cite the airport’s most recent passenger statistics.On Tuesday, about 2,192 passengers arrived at Maui’s airport on domestic flights, according to estimates from the state. That’s a 67% drop from numbers for the same day in 2022.
The island’s hotel rates averaged more than $600 per night in 2022 and even after the fires have remained above $450. Meanwhile, rental car rates have fallen below $50 a day and flights from LAX are available for less than $300. “The news reports have made it clear that thousands of people are in need of homes and proper infrastructure,” he said. “We do not wish to further burden the local community.”
Roofer Jeremy Delosreyes, who lost his home in the fire, speaks as workers repair the roof on a home on Ipukulu Way, Wednesday, Aug. 16, 2023, Maui, Hawaii. “Tourism doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It exists in a certain context,” Fa’anunu said, pointing to the history of marginalization and repression of Hawaii’s Native people, and the fact that visitors’ needs are often prioritized over those of locals.
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