Hawaii: Please Don’t Come Here

‘[MUSIC]

[NEWSCASTS]

NEWSCAST 1: Oh my gosh, look at the harbor.

NEWSCAST 2: Devastation and heartbreak as you saw parts of historic Lāhainā town destroyed as wind-whipped wildfires continue to rage.

NEWSCAST 3: It erupted so suddenly people had to run into the ocean to escape the fire and then later be rescued.

SAVANNAH HARRIMAN-POTE, PRODUCER: The night we were seeing all these fires break out, we had incredibly windy conditions. Where I lived in Honolulu, I had this big monkey pod tree outside of my window, and as I was falling asleep, I just remember hearing it lashing against the building, lashing back and forth.

We got the call early in the morning that there had been a fire that had impacted Lāhainā. There’s just sometimes, kind of, a dawning realization that it’s going to be a very different kind of day than you were expecting to have. And so, as we were getting more information about how many buildings were destroyed, and then about the fact that people were dying, that was when we, I think, began to realize that it wasn’t just going to be a different kind of day, but a different kind of week, month, probably a different kind of Hawai’i.

TARIRO MZEZEWA, HOST: What happens when a deadly natural disaster strikes a popular tourist destination, and how does it affect the people who call that place home? Māui’s residents lived through this in August 2023, when wildfires swept across Lāhainā, a town on the western part of the island. It engulfed businesses and homes, and killed more than 100 people. In the middle of the devastation, tourists kept coming to the island.

[THEME SONG]

This is Peak Travel, a new podcast from WHYY about how travel shapes local communities around the world. We’ll share the wonder that comes with exploring new places, as well as the harm that our travel habits can cause. And we’ll try to figure out how we can do it better.

I’m your host, Tariro Mzezewa. I’m from Zimbabwe, I grew up near Washington, D.C., and I’ve lived in L.A., Rome, New York and Atlanta.

Travel is part of who I am. My earliest memories are road tripping from Harare to Durban with my family, standing in front of Victoria Falls in total awe, and later, getting on a plane to leave an increasingly unstable country, with the hope of finding opportunity in another.

In my work as a travel journalist, I’ve talked to influencers, politicians, and leaders of tourism boards. I’ve also interviewed performers on cruise ships, hotel housekeepers, and airport restaurant workers. I’ve come to realize that though travel can offer personal fulfillment, it often comes at a cost.

[THEME SONG DISTORTS]

[MONTAGE OF TOURISM ADS]

TOURISM AD 1: What is a vacation?

TOURISM AD 2: It’s having everything you’ve ever dreamed of.

TOURISM AD 3: We were dining right on the beach.

TOURISM AD 4: I wanted a romantic getaway.

TOURISM AD 5: All included, all unlimited.

TOURISM AD 6: The vacation of your dreams. Call your travel agent…

[ADS DISTORT]

TM: The truth is the modern-day travel industry is selling us a fantasy.

[MUSIC]

Bungalows in the Maldives, bamboo treehouses in Bali, or bottomless rum and cokes at all-inclusive resorts in the Caribbean. Worse yet, “must-see” lists and TikTok trends are leading us all to the same angel-wing murals and pastel-colored homes.

But these Top Ten lists have a real impact on people’s livelihoods, and the planet. So, what can we do about it?

One of the most significant ways that tourism affects a place like Hawai’i is in its housing. Decades of tourism have created a housing crisis where costs are high, and there isn’t enough to go around. After the devastation of the fires on Māui, it’s gotten even worse.

[BEACH SOUNDS ON A STORMY DAY, WAVES LAPPING AND WIND]

Savannah Harriman-Pote, a reporter from Hawai’i, is walking along Kāʻanapali Beach, a popular tourist spot on Māui. It’s a fall day, just a few months after a wildfire ripped through the neighboring town of Lāhainā.

SHP: It was this really, really stormy, overcast day. And it was turning both the sky and then the ocean this like steely, steely gray.

TM: Still, the beach is crowded. Towels and umbrellas have been set out. On this day, the presence of so many people feels eerie.

SHP: And coming around, the first thing that I see is a Hawaiian flag and then a couple of feet over another Hawaiian flag. And then another. And then another.

TM: The flags are spread out across the sand among the tourists. They were placed there by a local activist group. Some of the flags are upside down — a signal that Hawai’i and its people are in distress.

SHP: The leaders of Lāhainā Strong had put up one Hawaiian flag for every person who was lost in the fire.

TM: When Savannah returned to Māui, she was disturbed by what she saw.

[MUSIC]

SHP: Before you get to Kāʻanapali, you drive through Lāhainā. And most of the area is closed off. You can see a bit of it from the road of the remains of the town that were burned. You can see the charred trees. You can see the remains of the harbor. And then you come out along that coast and you drive just a couple of miles up to Kāʻanapali where these resorts are placed. And the first thing I noticed was green — green golf courses, green trees, water features, just this little oasis, which is exactly what you would expect from a tropical paradise. It’s exactly what you would want if you were coming to visit. But in the context of the rest of the island of Māui and the fires that took place last summer, it feels really unsettling.

TM: In the days following the fire, many of Hawai’i’s residents and some of its leaders urged tourists not to come to the island. They hoped that empty hotels and short-term rentals could be given to residents who had lost their homes. But not long after…

[NEWSCASTS]

NEWSCAST 1: Tourism to the rest of West Māui reopened today.

NEWSCAST 2: The Hawai’i Tourism Authority is working to bring back visitors to Māui. HTA approved $2.6 million in funding.

TM: Josh Green, the governor of Hawai’i, made the decision to allow tourists back.

JOSH GREEN: Right now, I want to speak to the world when I say this: all of the other areas of Māui, friends, and the rest of Hawai’i are safe. When you come, you will support our local economy and help speed the recovery of the people that are suffering right now.

TM: But Savannah wasn’t seeing that support. She saw something quite different.

SHP: You’re seeing, you know, the pools out front, people on their vacations walking around with these like one foot tall margaritas, having just, I’m sure, a wonderful time.

[MUSIC]

TM: That only made an already difficult time more challenging, including for Keani Rawlins-Fernandez, council member for the Māui County Council.

KEANI RAWLINS-FERNANDEZ: By reopening West Māui, what we’ve seen is tourists using Lāhainā’s ashes as a backdrop for their photos to post online.
TM: Keani was upset when she heard the governor was already welcoming people back. After all, many of the island’s own residents hadn’t secured essentials like permanent housing or work — let alone begun to heal from the loss of their community. She wanted to learn more.
KRF: We held a meeting in West Māui to hear directly from the community. And we heard over 10 hours of testimony.
TM: The testimony was chilling.

TESTIMONY 1: My ‘ohana have lived in Lāhainā for generations. I’m here today because of them, and many, many more. Tourists should be the very least of our worries in our time of grief.

TESTIMONY 2: We cannot go back to my mom’s house, because her house is burnt down. I can’t go to my sister’s house, because her house is burnt down too.

TESTIMONY 3: All of my life, I’ve seen us being treated as second-class citizens in our own home. And we’re told that we need these outsiders to survive. And it is not true. It is not true.

TM: Keani took action.
KRF: It became clear that we needed to delay the opening of tourism in West Māui for the health and safety of our people. And so immediately after that meeting, I let staff know that I would be drafting a resolution for posting the next day.
TM: She urged the governor to delay the reopening of the island to tourists, in order to protect residents. Many of their homes had burned down and they would be forced to return to work in the very same industry that displaced them. Keani wanted residents to get back on their feet before starting to cater to visitors.
KRF: The pain and suffering that they experienced meant nothing to the people who are expecting them to show up without any housing stability, without any child care before they spend their entire day putting in the labor to turn a profit for their shareholders.
TM: The resolution got widespread support.
KRF: The community went to the capital on O’ahu to deliver the petition with over 14,000 signatures.
TM: But their petition wasn’t heard. West Māui reopened on November 1. The governor explained his decision two months later, during his State of the State address.
JG: It was an incredibly difficult decision to allow hotels to reopen while many who had been impacted by the wildfires still lacked permanent housing. People were concerned that reopening was too soon, while many others believed that moving toward recovery was absolutely necessary. But all I can tell you is this, I care deeply about every family in Hawai’i, I listen to people’s concerns, and I am sensitive about their fears — but sometimes a governor has to make certain decisions that are tough, and truly necessary for the health of our entire state.

[MUSIC]

TM: To many residents, it felt like the governor was saying that no matter what they needed, they had to keep serving as the rest of the world’s paradise. It’s a dynamic that has existed in Hawai’i for centuries. More on that after the break.

[MIDROLL BREAK]

[MUSIC]
TM: This is Peak Travel. I’m your host, Tariro Mzezewa.
The tourism industry has always presented Hawai’i to the world as a playground for those itching for a relaxing beach vacation — and Hawaiians, as an inherently welcoming people. But Hawai’i’s relationship with tourism has always been more complicated.
DAVIANNA PŌMAIKA’I MCGREGOR: I’m Davianna Pōmaika’i McGregor.
TM: Davianna is a professor at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. She studies ancestral Hawaiian history and culture.
DPM: Hawai’i was a fully functioning independent nation until it was overthrown in 1893, with the support of the United States government.
TM: Davianna says it’s important for people to understand that Native Hawaiians have their own culture, language, and customs. And they lived without tourism for a really long time. Then, the U.S. colonized the islands.
DPM: The U.S. asserted governance over Hawai’i. People were only given the option of voting: shall Hawai’i’ be immediately admitted into the union as a state?
[NEWSCASTS OF HAWAI’I BECOMING A STATE]
ARCHIVAL 1: Welcome to the United States of America, this is Hawai’i, 50th state of the union. ARCHIVAL 2: Following Alaska, a jubilant Hawai’i became the 50th state of the union.
TM: And with American control came more development.
DPM: After statehood, we’ve seen how American capital began to both build up tourism in Hawai’i, the military began to expand, and that the benefits from this development was not going to Native Hawaiians, but to people from outside of Hawai’i.
[MUSIC]
TM: It started with a few cruise ships and hotels. But as travel by plane became more popular, it became easier for people to go to the islands. And soon, they flocked there.
DPM: You have now tourism taking off at an unprecedented speed really, you know, the doubling, tripling of the number of hotel rooms within a 10-year period. But a lot of the problem with the tourist industry is that it’s market-driven, rather than driven by the people who live here.
TM: At the same time, tourism officials used Hawaiians’ own values against them. Like the famous concept of aloha.
DPM: We do have a very important value and practice of aloha.
TM: To Native Hawaiians, aloha means many things.
DPM: We have a term called aloha mai, aloha aku. When aloha is received, aloha is also given. So, in the context of Hawai’i, there was a very strong reciprocal relationship of aloha.
TM: But marketing of the islands suggested that Aloha meant all Hawaiians wanted to be in service to tourists.
TOURISM AD: Aloha, it means more than hello or goodbye.
TM: That was a complete misunderstanding of aloha.
DPM: They appropriated the natural aloha and openness and friendliness of the Native Hawaiian people, but they marketed it in a way that commercialized it, and put a value on it, that they were selling it, whereas, you know, it’s given you can’t put a price on that. It wasn’t one of just receiving, receiving, receiving, no. It was giving back. And so I think that host-visitor relationship that was promoted by the visitor industry was a one-sided relationship, where aloha is exploited by the tour industry.
[MUSIC]
TM: Coming up, how Hawaiians are pushing back against the tourism industry. That’s next, on Peak Travel.
MIDROLL BREAK
[MUSIC]

TM: This is Peak Travel. I’m Tariro Mzezewa.

The idea that tourists come to Hawai’i to take — resources, culture, service, and more — without giving back, has, for decades, made residents feel exploited. Last year, when the government welcomed tourists back, after the deadliest wildfire in a century, people gathered on Māui to voice their frustrations.

[PROTESTORS CHANTING]

PROTESTORS: Hey hey, ho ho, vacation rentals got to go. Hey hey, ho ho, vacation rentals got to go.

PROTESTOR 1: Aloha everybody. I’m going to keep it short and sweet. So this is day 41 we’ve been down here on Kāʻanapali Beach, occupying to pressure the mayor and the governor to come through with long-term, dignified housing for the Lāhainā fire survivors.

PROTESTOR 2: The wolves are at the door. The world wants in, and Lāhainā is for sale if the legislature does not act.

TM: Hawaiians protested at a temporary housing camp on one of Māui’s most popular tourist beaches — the same beach where Savannah saw the upside-down flags.
[BEACH SOUNDS]
PAELE KIAKONA: So we’re down in Kāʻanapali Beach. We are in the heart of possibly the busiest location on the entire West Māui.
TW: Paele Kiakona is one of the lead organizers with Lāhainā Strong — the group that set up the camp and was protesting the quick return to tourism.
PK: This rush to bring tourists back to Lāhainā has now basically displaced our community members more than they have been from the fire. These hotels are now being greedy, some of them, relocating, removing, and kicking out our displaced community members from these hotels to make room for the guests now coming in.
TM: Paele wasn’t surprised by these actions.
[MUSIC]
PK: We saw this coming, we knew this was gonna happen, and we protested the reopening of West Māui, knowing that it was too soon. And it went on deaf ears. The governor basically said, “The hell with your petition.”
TM: His own family was affected by the fires.
PK: People are hurting, you know. People have lost loved ones. I personally have seen things that I hope nobody ever has to see in their life. You know, my six, seven generations lived in my grandmother’s home, including myself, and it’s gone. So, that hurt that a lot of us feel when something that makes you who you are, is just completely wiped off the face of the planet. It’s pretty detrimental to a lot of people here.
TM: That’s why he wanted to keep tourists from coming to Māui for some time. He wanted his neighbors to find stable housing for themselves first and to heal emotionally, before they had to serve guests.
PK: The messaging that they sent to the rest of the world was: “Māui, Lāhainā, we need your help. We need your money. Come help us boost our economy.” That was the message created by government. The message that we were sending out to the world as Lāhainā Strong was, “We need time to heal.”
TM: But their plea didn’t reach everyone. On the day Savannah visited Kāʻanapali, some tourists were on the beach. Hardie Tankersley and his wife, Meredith, were visiting from L.A. — a trip they’ve made several times. But this was their first time since Lāhainā burned down.
[BEACH SOUNDS]
HARDIE TANKERSLEY: I can imagine what it must be like to be a resident here and have been through the level of tragedy that they suffered, and to have people from other places coming and just sort of trying to have a good time is a little incongruent.

TM: They had a different idea of how their trip could impact the island.

HT: It made us think about it very carefully, about whether we wanted to come this year or not, and whether it was appropriate. And we have made a decision to try to contribute to local organizations as much as possible to support the community, because we’ve always loved coming here, and we want to support the community that’s here as much as we can.

TM: But seeing the protest, and considering their place in it, was difficult.

MEREDITH TANKERSLEY: We didn’t know when we were coming out to the beach here that this was here. And I feel really bad, and everything makes me want to cry. Like, I will start crying if I talk about it too much. So that’s it, like, but we didn’t know it was here.
TM: Paele understands this sentiment. He knows it’s not the tourists’ fault personally. That’s why he protested for stronger government regulation to protect Native Hawaiians.
PK: When people come down here, and they start asking questions, and how they can help and stuff, and they don’t even realize that their presence here, even though they’re not at fault, their presence here has been displacing members even more.
TM: Paele and the other protestors were demanding a pause on tourism to the area, long enough for locals to be able to find homes. They wanted the island’s many Airbnbs and other vacation rentals to be converted into long-term housing — and for those units to go to people who were displaced by the fires.
PK: The reality is if we ban short term rentals, and we have an immediate moratorium on short-term rentals across the state, we solve Hawai’i’s housing crisis.
TM: After months of considering this idea, Hawai’i’s governor said he won’t ban Airbnbs outright. Instead, counties can regulate short-term rentals however they choose. In response, Māui County is phasing out vacation rentals in areas zoned for apartments. For now, Paele is just hoping as many tourists as possible postpone their trips to Māui.
PK: The message to the world is, “You plan on coming with disrespect, plan on changing your trip, and don’t come here at all, because we don’t want you here.” But like I say, we’re not against tourism. We understand the economic implications of how tourism operates in Hawai’i. But how tourism operates with that extractive style, it has taken so much from our landscape, and it created the conditions that caused this fire.
TM: In the wake of the devastation of his hometown, Paele has found purpose in advocating for his neighbors.
PK: I truly believe this is my calling. I’ve always, my dream from when I was, you know, coming up through high school was to come back and fight for my people. It’s just been part of my life, basically: Hawaiians fighting against government, Hawaiians being overlooked, Hawaiians being treated like second class citizens in their own home. So, I made it my goal, and my purpose, to educate myself, and to come back here and fight for my people.
[PROTESTORS SINGING IN HAWAIIAN]

[THEME MUSIC]

TM: Coming up this season, on Peak Travel…

RODNEY PASKO: Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, the lounge car is once again open and serving..

TM: We’ll meet the residents of some of the world’s most popular destinations.

POPI SIBIYA: Ugh, no. I’m tired of African people having to perform. Can they not perform? Can they just be themselves?

MARIA DA PENHA [TRANSLATED FROM PORTUGUESE]: The Olympics, it was made very beautiful for those who come from abroad, not for the people who live in the country.

TM: We’ll learn how tourism has changed their lives, and their environment.

ALEXANDRA DUNNET: I was so scared. It’s like, where am I going to live? Like, if everything is this expensive, what am I going to do?

CLAUDIO VERNIER [TRANSLATED FROM ITALIAN]: We are at risk of turning this city into an empty Pompeii, devoid of its soul, and its soul is precisely the people who live here.

TM: And try to figure out how we can travel better.

JIMENA LEDGARD, PRODUCER: You’re having this huge privilege which is to travel to a different country, visit a different culture. So, with great power comes great responsibility, right? [Laugh]

TM: That’s this season, on Peak Travel.

This is Peak Travel. I’m your host, Tariro Mzezewa.

Our senior producer is Michael Olcott. Our producer is Michaela Winberg, and our associate producer is Bibiana Correa. We had production help on this episode from Savannah Harriman-Pote.

Our editor is Meg Driscoll. Original music, mixing and sound design by Catherine Anderson. Engineering by Al Banks, Charlie Kaier, Diana Martinez, and Mike Villers. Our tile art was created by Nick Rogacki.

Our executive producer is Tom Grahsler.

Peak Travel is a production of WHYY, distributed by PRX, and part of the NPR podcast network. Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, the iHeart Radio app — or wherever you get your podcasts

Executive Producer: Tom Grahsler
Senior Producer: Michael Olcott
Producer: Michaela Winberg
Associate Producer: Bibiana Correa
Additional Production: Savannah Harriman-Pote
Editor: Meg Driscoll
Original Music, Mixing, and Sound Design: Catherine Anderson
Engineers: Al Banks, Charlie Kaier, Diana Martinez, and Mike Villers
Tile Art: Nick Rogacki

Peak Travel is a production of WHYY, distributed by PRX, and part of the NPR podcast network.