It’s official: tourists are lousy neighbors

Talk about biting the hand that feeds us. Associated Press writer Sudhin Thanawala found that tourists in Hawaii make lousy neighbors.

Tourism is Hawaii’s biggest industry. That and Dan Inouye and the military industrial complex that resides here. Oh, and state government. But tourism ranks up there among the Top 5, for sure.

Sudhin did some investigative reporting and found that not all of Hawaii’s residents are thrilled to have six or seven million strangers wander through the state each year. Some of them rent homes or hotel rooms that are not even in Waikiki which is where locals want tourists to go and stay, so they don’t bother the rest of us.

Instead, according to the APstory, some tourists leave the designated tourist zones and visit regular neighborhoods where regular folks live and that makes noise beyond what regular folks make, and drive up home prices, and destroy the sense of community. I don’t know about elsewhere, but it’s easy to see what they’ve done to Papakolea and Kalihi.

Somehow or another Oahu now has a ban on short-term rentals, which many locals want to expand, while others, especially those with bed and breakfast establishments in their homes, want to see lifted.

The solution is simple. Quiet tourists who pay in advance. Tourists coming to Hawaii, those who don’t intend to stay in the designated tourist dwelling zones such as Waikiki, would be required to bid on short-term rentals a year in advance with a non-refundable deposit.

Prior to entering Hawaii, said tourists would then be required to undergo a psychological examination as to mental and emotional worthiness, and put up a bond, you know, just in case they make noise sufficient to ruffle a few local feathers when they’re finally awarded a stay at one of the short-term rentals.

Once word about Hawaii’s new tough love policy toward tourists gets out, there won’t be any tourists are lousy neighbors problem to worry about.