Tourism: Hawaii's future, for better or for worse

Hawaii's forseeable future lies in tourism, for better or for worse. Direct effects alone contribute 24% of the state's employment, and the state's other primary economic engine, federal funding, will probably decline with the coming retirement of our influential senators. There are no plausible replacements: private biotech firms, for instance, employ less than 1000 people, despite reaping the benefits of Act 221, which costs the state much more annually than our entire tourism budget [1]. We are not a leader in technology (49th in patents per capita) and there is no indication that it is possible to become so.

It pains me to say all this, being a techie myself. But there are upsides. Hawaii is a tourist mecca because it's beautiful, so the aims of the industry are somewhat aligned with my personal hopes for Hawaii's future. Also, tourism scales for the future: as the world gets richer, tourism gets more lucrative (while tech industries, for instance, face more competition).

It would be wise to acknowledge tourism's critical role, and address the critical related issues: Increase HTA's funding by an order of magnitude (cutting funding as necessary to our collective pipe dreams), and broaden its scope to include this list. Lobby Washington heavily for easier tourist visas. Determine what brings tourists to Hawaii, and preserve that. Ramp up branding and marketing, especially in developing economies like China. Develop systems to better distribute tourism windfall, and make service jobs less terrible.

[1] The Hawaii Tourism Authority received less than $70 million in 2006.