My grandmother was your typical Italian Nonna.
Loving, yet cantankerous. Diminutive in stature, yet larger than life.
When she doled out advice, it tended to be said in both English and Italian - the former for us kids to understand it, the latter because, in her words, it sounded much more elegant to be critical when using a romance language.
One of her signature sayings, certainly not proprietary but a favorite nonetheless, was this (and I'm cleaning this up): "Don't poop where you eat."
In other words, don't bite the hand that feeds you. Don't dip your pen in the company ink.
That's how I feel in the wake of the decision by the Hawaii Tourism Authority to manage and limit the number of tourists visiting the main island of Oahu.
Hawaii just pooped where it eats.
This decision is short-sighted. Tourism is the lifeblood of the islands. It drives everything, if not directly then certainly in a trickle-down effect. If you're going to limit the number of tourists coming to Oahu or Maui, which had already expressed concern about too many tourists, then you're also limiting - actually, reducing - the amount of tourist dollars spent in Hawaii.
It just seems counterproductive.
I certainly understand and have empathy for the residents of the islands who feel like they are being trampled by tourism, but I also certainly understand that that is part and parcel of living in paradise.
And being over-run by tourism hasn't even hit its return to peak yet. The Associated Press is reporting that Oahu visitor arrivals are still down nearly 39 percent from 2019.
Frankly, it's hard to see where having a third less tourists on the islands right now constitutes having "too many visitors." But that's what residents are telling state officials.
"During the pandemic, people figured out how nice it was not to have so many tourists," activist KC Connors, who is a member of the Facebook group Enough Tourists Already, told the Associated Press. "If Oahu is already filled to capacity at this stage of reopening, what's going to happen when the international visitors come back?"
But, again, that's a big part of living in Hawaii or any other tourist mecca. I'm quite certain residents of the Outer Banks in North Carolina aren't thrilled with having to wait 45 minutes for a table at a restaurant during the summer, but they deal with it. I'm quite certain the snowbirds who invade Miami and other popular Florida destinations during the winter make life crazy when they practically double the population for three months, but they deal with it.
They deal with it because of the economy it generates.
Right now, nobody has a plan for what is a realistic, feasible number of tourists on the islands will be. Is it 100,000 visitors per week? 200,000? 50,000? Will the 100,001st visitor be the one who rents the last available car? Or will it be the 99,999th tourist, which would kind of make the whole idea of limiting visitors a moot point?
Either way, this was a tough call by officials in Hawaii.
One can only hope it doesn't come back to haunt them.
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