Each year the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau asks thousands of tourists who came to Hawaii how they liked it. For most of the past decade, they have liked it plenty fine. In the 2005 survey, visitor satisfaction started to fall. In the 2006 survey, it cratered. From the Honolulu Star-Bulletin article:

Satisfaction levels from Japanese visitors fell 13 percentage points from 2005 to 2006. Domestic visitor satisfaction also dropped -- by 7 percentage points for visitors from the eastern region of the mainland and 3 points for visitors from the western states.

Um, maybe the HVCB could give me the money because I can tell them what's wrong. Really. An increasingly dated and decrepit hotel infrastructure -- yes, that's right. There have been a ton of renovations but, in reality, its almost always slapping lipstick on a pig. You can dress up a box-on-the-beach in a designer outfit and give it nice curtains and sheets, but its still and ugly box-on-the-beach. Add in sub-par food at most hotels plus the ridiculous nickel and dime charges to jack up the hotel's take ($10 for a welcoming fruit punch? Please) and you've got some problems. Add in a visitor industry workforce that's increasingly demoralized by the difficult of making ends meet on salaries that couldn't even buy a house in the Midwest anymore and no wonder the "Aloha Spirit" seems to be flaggin.

I also think that Hawaii is hitting its carrying capacity pretty quickly. Traffic jems are a daily fixture on all major islands. In Honolulu, gridlock on the H1 is so everpresent that I will only venture on the freeway between 10 am and 2 pm or after 8 pm at night. For the natural attractions -- parks beaches and trails -- overflowing toilets and smelly bathrooms are the norm. Property crime rates in the islands -- meaning, people breaking into rental cars -- are among the highest in the nation. Sounds bleak? I hope so. I love Hawaii but I always tell my friends who come to visit -- focus on the mountains and the ocean, not what man has wrought here. Even more amazingly, man is focused on jamming more visitors through Hawaii than ever before. On Maui, a lovely hotel is demolished to make way for a much denser timeshare in Kapalua, where its already hard to find a parking place for the beach many days of the week. On Kauai, they are planning to build even more condos amidst the Condomania of Poipu.

So what to do? Two things. On Neighbor Islands, where the carrying capacity is truly maxed out, focus on quality. Knock down some of the ugly monstrosities and build modern, lovely resorts in their place. Higher quality hotels equals higher roomrates, higher satisfaction levels, and higher wages. I'd also put a room cap in place with no additional resort room allowed on the Neighbor Islands for at least a decade. Sure, this will crimp job creation. But do we really need any more low-paying hotel jobs at low-rent properties? In Waikiki, we should embrace the crowds. That's what Waikiki is for. Let the hotels on the beachfront rebuild at the same density rather than forcing them to reduce their density in order to comply with zoning laws, something they would have to do if they wanted to do a wholesale replacement. And pack them in even more -- just in nicer buildings. Waikiki is all about urban paradise so make it even more urban and more upscale.

One last thing that must be addressed. Beach erosiion. Sea walls must be banned or dismantled. Property owners will howl but in the end, they still lose their beach to the sea. The collective good must trump individual property rights, which, in some cases, are dubious in their own right (a LOT of those sea walls are unpermitted, people!). Have a good weekend and a hui hou.

—Alex, 03/02/07