I can’t be the only one who’s got a little glee from the rains recently. I usually enjoy this weather anyway, but it was especially gratifying to know that the first few days of tourism’s return were a bit rainy.
I’m not particularly proud of my knee-jerk reaction; I tend to believe that feeling such cruel satisfaction is never good, especially when applied to real people I have never met. But now that we’re returning to the old new normal – lots of tourists, but with masks and social distancing – the visitors have become much more obvious, even more intrusive.
There have always been reasons to resist tourists. They make traffic worse, they overcrowd beaches and sidewalks, they are noisy, they litter. You are not alone with any of these posts, and not every tourist fits this description, but enough of them to make it easy to summarize them all. At the start of the pandemic, the absence of tourists was a bit of a joke in an otherwise endless cascade of fear.
Suffice it to say that my relationship with tourists is complicated. Judging by the growing number of calls to think about how we can turn the local economy away from tourism – or at least diversify enough to significantly reduce our dependency – I don’t think it’s just me.
2020 was brutally and disgustingly bad, but the locals-only interlude during the lockdown was nice in many ways. Less traffic, less noise, less excitement. To be able to visit places you would otherwise never do because it would be too crowded with visitors. It felt like Hawaii was primarily meant for the locals, which it usually isn’t.
That’s the catch, however. The reason tourists have priority over residents is because of our economic dependence on them. For people like me, no tourism meant a brief bubble of peace amid the currents of the pandemic. But for countless others, no tourism meant permanent unemployment and the quick and permanent closure of their businesses.
Spending less time in traffic and having more beach to myself was nice, but it wasn’t worth it for people to lose their livelihood.
The pandemic has shown more clearly and directly what exactly we are exchanging for tourist dollars: the possibility for the locals to continue to live here. Many aspects of life are better without tourists, but for many locals, life is impossible without tourists. That makes the discussion more difficult as to whether we should open up to tourism again or not.
It’s also hard to ignore that I’m not a native Hawaiian, so I’m here like a permanent tourist. I’m much more interested in my community and local culture than any tourist, but it’s important to be aware of the halitosis of hypocrisy when mumbling involuntarily about someone who doesn’t belong here.
Be a good tourist
The big question now is what exactly is the linchpin away from tourism? Technology? I’ll believe it if I see more than an occasional pulse. Agriculture seems more intuitive and compatible with island life, but I seriously doubt there are enough people out there who dedicate themselves to the tireless work of farming to make a big difference.
That’s not to say that such efforts aren’t worth pursuing, but they are glacial shifts in either dying or negligible industries. If nothing is sustainable in the short or medium term, it could be better to discuss how tourism can be reformed in order to make it more sustainable and to disrupt the lives of the locals in a less warlike manner.
Again, this is a worthy discussion, but I’m not sure you can sanitize something as exploitative as spending money just to be in another place. For many people, the contract as a tourist is that the place you are visiting owes you something so that you get your money’s worth. It’s an attitude as ugly as berating a firefighter for having your tax dollars helping fund their paycheck, but it’s still getting motivated and manifested in the behavior of countless visitors.
I also think of my own experiences while traveling, as a tourist at someone else’s home. I would like to think that I am a good tourist, but that is not my decision alone. But I am conscientious, look for cultural and learning opportunities and overall make sure that I am a guest and should be grateful to be one.
Coming from Hawaii, I’ve learned to be a good tourist because that’s what I’ve always appreciated in the tourists I have dealt with. Being respectful is not incompatible with a joyful and meaningful vacation.
If there’s a serious plan to turn away from tourism, I’m all-in. But it must either be able to replace everything that is being lost in the current tourism economy or to even out the resulting inequalities. Otherwise it’s just a hope – a beautiful and perhaps necessary hope, but society needs more than that. And what a bilious joy some of us may have when we see that the vacation is rainy, we also need more than that .
Comments are closed.