Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 38, Number 5, 1 May 2021 — Lessons Learned: 'Elua [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Lessons Learned: 'Elua

J LEO ELELE w > TRUSTEE MESSSAGES f

One year ago, we were in the midst of what would heeome the first wave of COVID19 to hit our shores. At the time I questioned why the state government was not doing more to proteet the health of its eitizens; why the governor was not using his emergency authority to make more aggressive decisions to protect our shores, as Mayor Kawakami was doing for Kaua'i.

Here we are, vaccine in hand, and our state's eeonomie engine starting up.

The Department of Business, Eeonomie Development and Tourism predicts Hawai'i will receive roughly five million visitors in 202 1 . While that is half of the record high of over ten million visitors in 2019, it is still a large number - and they are coming in large numbers already. Those numbers seem even larger since nearly everything in the visitor industry has been shut down for an entire year and seemingly overnight our beaches went from being empty and onee again filled with wildlife, to being full of visitors. When the state's eeonomie engine shut down in 2020 there was a lot of talk by state and community leaders that this proves Hawai'i is too reliant on tourism and that the state needed to diversify its economy. Then nothing happened, and now that visitors are returning to our shores and the tourism-based economy is returning, so are the things we kama'aina were happy to see go away - traffic, crowded beaches, and our loeal neighborhoods being inundated with visitors taking up our parking. As visitors are taking advantage of discounted airline and hotel rates, state and community leaders are onee again talking about how Hawai'i needs to diversify its economy and not be so reliant on tourism. They had an entire year of tourism being virtually shut down - what were they waiting for? r 7

After the initial shock of the visitor industry shutting down, no working groups were formed out of the legislature, no emergency orders eame from the Governor's office to form a working group - nothing from any of our state leaders. It is not realistic to think that we ean replace the visitor industry in a year, or that we could have another eeonomie engine ready to fire up onee COVID- 19 restrictions

started to loosen.

However, without any action, not only : does the state not have another engine, we do i not have a plan, ideas, or even a wishful hint ī of what or how Hawai'i ean diversify. While f some have been talking about an agriculture i industry, it has been shown that the largest : consumer of our Hawai'i based agriculture is the visitor industry. : Looking to the future, our state leaders s should be looking to the tech industry as one way to begin diversifying the state's l economy: easing regulations on crypto cur5 rencies, updating and expanding the state's highspeed internet infrastructure, and providing incentives for both corporations and t work force to migrate to our shores. Hawai'i : is uniquely situated to be in a favorable time 3 zone for the Asia markets. Not only is this t good for tech companies, but the legislature should explore ways to ease regulations on the currency markets as well. Hawai'i's time t zone takes advantage of the closing of the : U.S. Ananeial markets and the opening of : the New Zealand, Australian, and Asian : markets. ī These are just a few things that our state leaders could be looking at to diversify our economy. The once-in-a-lifetime opportunity was squandered with inaction during the i first-ever shut down of the visitor industry. I One thing is for sure, we ean no longer afford 3 for them to just say we need to diversify , we need aehon. ■

Brendon Kalei 'āina Lee TrustBE, At-lsrgE