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+--- Thread: Limiting number of tourists to help environment (/showthread.php?tid=1762)
Limiting number of tourists to help environment - Guest - 01-16-2008
Anyone catch Senator Hemmings opening day speech?
Perhaps the strongest pro-environment speech came from Republican Senate Leader, Fred Hemmings, who called for limiting the number of tourists coming to the islands.
http://starbulletin.com/breaking/breaking.php?id=6637
And from the Hawaii Tribune a few days ago we get the following:
While there is no limit to the number of visitors coming to Hawaii, Johnson said the state was "about at its limit" with the 7.5 million tourists that were projected to visit in 2007.
"If you get beyond that, you have impacted residents' way of life to the point you lose this special thing called aloha," he said, noting that aloha is on the decline.
I'd love to see a tourist cap!
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Coming home soon!
RE: Limiting number of tourists to help environment - Bob Orts - 01-16-2008
You can by way of federal regulations limit the number of foreign people allowed to enter the country as a tourist.[
]You can by way of federal, state, county or city regulation limit the number of people who enter an occupancy limited or controlled venue like parks and buildings.[
]You can by way of federal, state or local regulation limit the number of conveyances that transport people into and from a facility, like how amny ships can dock or flights into an airport.[
]You can not prohibit a citizen or unrestricted legal resident of the United Staes of America from entering another state within the United States of America.[
]
RE: Limiting number of tourists to help environment - Guest - 01-16-2008
The "State" can restrict transportation COMPANIES from transporting tourists to the islands by making laws that make the companies unprofitable. Thus, they would have to raise their costs to only those that could really afford to get to HAWAII!
[
]How many tourists would come if all of a sudden the price of a plane ticket jumped from $1000.00 to $10,000.00 because of State Airport "Fees" [
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Coming home soon!
RE: Limiting number of tourists to help environment - Guest - 01-16-2008
quote:
Originally posted by Bob Orts
....
You can not prohibit a citizen or unrestricted legal resident of the United Staes of America from entering another state within the United States of America.[
Ok... well let's just end the Japanese traffic then [
][B)]That should take some load off of the islands.
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Coming home soon!
RE: Limiting number of tourists to help environment - Bob Orts - 01-17-2008
You do know that an "airport passenger fee" would apply to all passengers including you? So your go airline special $39 inter-island fare would become $9,039.00. Humm, $9,400.00 to fly to or from the mainland. Yep, that will certainly cure Hawaii's tourism concerns. It will also keep friends and family from visiting. Will certainly keep doctors from coming here. Not to mention teachers, dentist, educators, business people, scientist, and anyone else who can't afford $9,000+ airfares.
So who does that leave us with?
Ourselves.
The richest of the rich (and we all know how much we love their treatment of the island)
And the military.
Reading the message not just the words of the speech, I got the impression the message was stop the uncontrolled growth of tourism and residential development through responsible planning and zoning. Just because a developer wants a mega resort, doesn’t mean the money in puts into the community is worth the impact and just because a developer wants a 2,000 home development doesn’t mean the increase property tax is worth the impact. In other words, stop looking just at the money generated but the overall impact.
RE: Limiting number of tourists to help environment - Guest - 01-17-2008
quote:
Originally posted by Bob Orts
....
So who does that leave us with?
Ourselves.
The richest of the rich (and we all know how much we love their treatment of the island)
And the military....
I know plenty of people that would be just fine with that[
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Coming home soon!
RE: Limiting number of tourists to help environment - Guest - 01-17-2008
quote:
Originally posted by Bob Orts
You do know that an "airport passenger fee" would apply to all passengers including you? So your go airline special $39 inter-island fare would become $9,039.00. Humm, $9,400.00 to fly to or from the mainland. Yep, that will certainly cure Hawaii's tourism concerns. It will also keep friends and family from visiting. Will certainly keep doctors from coming here. Not to mention teachers, dentist, educators, business people, scientist, and anyone else who can't afford $9,000+ airfares.....
What if the State didn't charge Hawaii Residents these Fees?
Do you remember "Coupon Books" where you could buy a book of Airline Coupons and the price would be about $50.00 per ticket. The only restriction on using them... Was that you had to show a Hawaii ID card or Military ID Card.
This was less then 12 years ago.
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Coming home soon!
RE: Limiting number of tourists to help environment - rusty h - 01-17-2008
get me a break.... we are all from earth and deserve the freedom to see the world....especially americans visiting the 50 states of america. sounds alittle racist to me. maybe the arctic would better suit those who want to be left alone and not see people[?]
RE: Limiting number of tourists to help environment - Sharlee - 01-17-2008
quote:Still not a fan. It would be cost prohibitive for family members to visit and that is an important form of support system for me. I don't want to feel like the responsibility to see family would fall completely on me because no one could afford to come visit. Not to mention that fees like that would completely kill tourism, not lessen it.
What if the State didn't charge Hawaii Residents these Fees?
When life gives you lemons....trade them for chocolate!
RE: Limiting number of tourists to help environment - mgeary - 01-18-2008
Just an observation...my brother moved from California to the Bitterroot Valley in Montana in the 1980's, just at the start of a land boom there. Lots of upper-middle class to rich people moved into the Missoula area (and other areas like Kalispell and Bozeman, too). Huey Lewis (of Huey Lewis and the News) was one of the more famous immigrants to the Bitterroot Valley. My brother was working-class, and never made enough to support his family very well, so he wound up back in California 5 years later.
The locals hated the new immigrants, and probably still do. They were just different. Many of them were tree-huggers, didn't like elk hunting, and wanted to change the way Montana worked. It was apparent when I went up to visit with my brother. At the gas stations, the burger joint, the grocery store, when the locals saw my California license plates, we were treated brusquely, if not outright rudely. It was nice that everybody's property values went up, but the newcomers weren't accepted. But still they came.
The funny thing was, many of the "local" Montanans had come many decades earlier from places like Illinois, New York, Washington, even California. If you sat at a bar, they'd tell you how bad things were changing with all the new Californians (and Oregonians, too), but then they'd tell you that they didn't try to change things when they moved here in the 1960's or 1970's. They didn't even see any hypocracy in their point of view.
Funny how people think, sometimes. Even the tourists were talked down to. Lawyers from Chicago, dentists from Florida, people with enough money to fly to Montana for a fishing or hunting trip. The guides would treat them well enough to get their pay, and a tip, but when they were amongst each other, the locals would snicker and look down their noses at the rubes.
I guess it's what you make of it. People are people wherever you go, and people will always want to travel to see the sights, whether it's Paris, or the Bitterroot Valley, or Hawaii. If the tourists to Hawaii are not generally well-behaved, or not respectful of the locals or the land, I'd think it would benefit everybody to educate them about aloha. I just don't see eliminating or even restricting tourism from Hawaii's economy (powerful business interests and their politicians need their money), so the question seems to be how do you make tourism work? What form of communication is there between the local interests and the tourism industry?
How do I know?