When John De Fries’s mom was in highschool within the Forties, she was forbidden from dancing the hula and talking Hawaiian, the language of her ancestors. The college she attended was for kids of Hawaiian descent, however as a substitute of encouraging college students to embrace that heritage, it tried to erase it.
“That entire era was the byproduct of this sweeping Americanization, Westernization,” Mr. De Fries recalled just lately. “What’s ironic is that, 51 years later, my mom’s great-granddaughter graduated from the identical faculty. And by then, fluency in native Hawaiian had grow to be a requirement — nevertheless it took half a century to get there.”
In September 2020, when Hawaii’s tourism trade was in pandemic-induced free fall, Mr. De Fries took excessive tourism function in his house state, changing into the primary native Hawaiian to carry the place. Because the president and chief govt of the Hawaii Tourism Authority, he’s now accountable for supporting the trade that, earlier than the pandemic, brought in $2 billion in state tax income and employed greater than 200,000 individuals.
The place he holds has just lately been in flux, Mr. De Fries informed me after I reached him on a video name at his house on the Large Island. A number of years in the past, H.T.A.’s fundamental job was to model Hawaii and market the islands to potential guests. The company nonetheless does these issues, however as of late its official remit has expanded to incorporate pure sources, group — and Hawaiian tradition.
Over the course of our dialog, Mr. De Fries, 71, described how the teachings he discovered as a toddler in Waikiki inform his work, what it felt like when Hawaii was empty of vacationers and why he acquired hooked on the tv present “The White Lotus,” which takes place in Hawaii.
Our dialog has been edited for size and readability.
You grew up in Waikiki within the Nineteen Fifties. How does that have inform your work?
I used to be born and raised two blocks from Waikiki Seashore, a half-block from Honolulu Zoo, so actually about 2,000 yards from the foot of Diamond Head. The waters there had been my household’s fishing grounds for a century earlier than I used to be born, and after I was rising up, we might fish them each week. What I discovered as a child was that Waikiki was first a supply of meals, then it was a supply of drugs — from seaweeds and sea urchins and different issues — after which it was a spot of recreation and well-being. There was a hierarchical order there: meals, drugs, recreation. However within the improvement of Waikiki, we inverted that order, and we put recreation on high.
In order we take into consideration making a regenerative mannequin for tourism, we have now to return to classes that we had been studying again within the day. Native Hawaiians all the time understood that their potential to maintain life in the course of the Pacific needed to do with residing contained in the boundaries of the pure atmosphere. So after I take a look at the longer term and the alternatives we have now for tourism, I don’t see how we do it at scale until we begin to evolve a Twenty first-century model of that type of pondering. Not all people within the trade is prepared for that, however I don’t suppose we have now a alternative.
Did the pandemic shift native attitudes towards Hawaii’s vacationers?
We ended 2019 with a document variety of customer arrivals: 10.4 million. And 6 months later, in July 2020, customer arrivals had been hovering round zero. I keep in mind I used to be standing on Kalakaua Avenue in Waikiki one night time at 9 p.m., and there was not a single shifting car in both course. It felt like a movie set, frankly — it was eerie. An financial collapse of that scale is sort of a massive constructing collapsing in on itself, and persons are trapped beneath. Individuals are getting damage.
However on the identical time, for the area people, it was euphoric, proper? No visitors. No crowds on the seaside. The seaside parks had been open. The forest trails had been open. And native residents felt like we acquired our islands again. I skilled the euphoria, too. However I additionally knew it was just like the equal of a sugar excessive, as a result of there was this entire huge physique of labor that we must do to get this technique re-erected.
So how do you rebuild tourism in a manner that works for everybody?
Every island has developed its personal motion plan, so the reply to that query goes to be very island particular. The committees that developed these plans had been very various — you may need had a restaurant proprietor, a schoolteacher, a resort proprietor. The entire intent of that planning course of was to present the group the prospect to codesign and co-define what a sustainable mannequin of tourism would possibly appear to be. However typically, you’re going to have individuals who suppose 6 million guests a yr is sufficient. And also you’re going to have others saying we are able to do 10 million once more. So there’s that type of rigidity in that debate, however there’s additionally an settlement to be open-minded and civil within the dialogue.
“The White Lotus,” a tv present set in a fictional Hawaiian resort, has attracted a whole lot of consideration just lately. Have you ever seen the present?
I watched the primary episode and I believed to myself, “That is utterly ludicrous.” After which I couldn’t cease watching it. My spouse and I simply turned type of hooked on it, as a result of boy was it near some experiences I’ve had. Realizing full effectively that there’s artistic license taken in it, I believed they did a fantastic job. Particularly, when the younger girl is having a dialogue with the native man who’s within the luau present and he or she acknowledges that the tradition is being marginalized and he or she’s asking, “How can this occur?” These are alarm bells which were going off on the bottom right here for fairly a while. There’s a complete dialog about methods to construct individuals’s capability to ship genuine cultural experiences and derive monetary profit for themselves and their households — however with out making individuals really feel like they’re having to give up their very own energy.
How do you create cultural experiences for vacationers that don’t really feel exploitative?
Individuals must really feel their cultural id and way of life is in actual fact being valued. And I’m optimistic about it as a result of I imagine the market goes to assist drive this transformation. You can not counterfeit tradition; you’ll be able to try to, however you’re not going to achieve success. So when the market begins calling for extra genuine cultural experiences, it should start to make industrial sense. As a result of with a purpose to shift a system of this scale, the industrial drivers grow to be actually vital.
What message would you wish to share with guests to Hawaii?
, native residents have a accountability to host guests in a manner that’s acceptable. Conversely, guests have a accountability to bear in mind that their vacation spot is somebody’s house, somebody’s neighborhood, somebody’s group. Approaching journey in that manner will produce higher experiences for each the customer and the native resident, so I might encourage everybody to maintain that in thoughts. And revel in your mai tai at sundown! Don’t neglect that.
Paige McClanahan, an everyday contributor to the Journey part, can be the host of The Better Travel Podcast.
