The damage has been almost entirely to private homes, far from areas frequented by visitors. But the volcano that has pummelled the southeast corner of Hawaii Big Island has certainly had an impact on the state’s vital tourism industry, officials say.
I chatted by phone on Friday with Ross Birch, head of Hawaii Big Island Tourism. He told me there’s no doubt that the uncertainty has hurt his island’s economy. He also agreed that a lot of the concern isn’t necessary.
“Less than 10 square miles has been affected by the volcano,” he said. “The island is 4,028 square miles.”
The town of Pahoa is only a couple minutes away from the lava flows, and businesses are still open. Hilo, the main town on the island’s east coast, is 30 minutes away by car and hasn’t been affected. The Kona coast, where most visitors to the island go, is a roughly 100 km’s away; two hours or so by car.
It’s understandable that folks are concerned, but having a lava flow in southeast Hawaii Big Island and worrying about one’s safety in Kona would be like someone saying they’re afraid to visit Niagara Falls because of flooding in Toronto, or someone cancelling a trip to downtown San Francisco during last fall’s fires in Napa and Sonoma wine country.
There was a report on FOX television the other night that warned of danger to people on the island of Oahu, which is 225 miles away. That kind of misinformation is extremely harmful to residents who depend on tourism to feed their families.
My niece, Heather Barclay, sent me a note a month or so ago asking if she and her husband, Allan, should go after they finished a skateboarding clinic they were leading on Maui. I told her it was perfectly safe, so they went for a few days this week.
“There’s some haziness from vog (volcano emissions mixed with fog) but I didn’t notice any real issues,” she told me. “My friends said they noticed day one that it just smelled a little bad and bothered their throat for a day, but not me. We got to see the glow from the volcano.”
She also swam with dolphins off the Kona coast and seemed to have had a great time.
Aside from a bit of smoke, the popular Kona region on the Big Island of Hawaii has been unaffected by the island’s volcano eruption, which is more than100 miles away. JIM BYERS PHOTO
Birch said visitor arrival numbers for the island won’t be available until next week. But he does hear anecdotal evidence that businesses have been hurt.
“According to our preliminary stats for for May, we actually were up 20 per cent in arrivals from the U.S. mainland. But we’re definitely down from Japan and a couple others, although those are smaller markets for us.”
Cruise ships have cancelled stops on the Big Island, and that’s a big problem for local businesses.
“We’ve had 14 or 15 missed calls” by cruise ships, each of which brings 2,500 people. That’s a lot of missed lunches and tours and souvenir shopping in the bigger tourist areas, such as the pretty, west coast town of Kailua-Kona.
“Hotels have had some cancellations, and we’ve some group bookings change their dates. We might see a little bit of a slip in hotel occupancy.”
Birch said business people have told him they expect to lose anywhere from tens of thousands of dollars to even millions.
Hapuna Beach is a good two or three hours drive from the active volcano on Hawaii Big Island. JIM BYERS PHOTO
One of the issues, he said, is that hotels don’t want to bring in guests who appear reluctant to visit. Travel agents feel much the same way; that they don’t want to appear to force a good customer into a decision they might later regret.
Being killed by the kind of slow-moving, somewhat predictable lava flows they have on the Big Island is extremely unlikely. What’s a larger concern are the toxic gases that emanate from inside the earth.
“The government has installed new air monitors on the island. There have been some days where the air in Kona is less favourable, but it usually stays for a day or two before the trade winds kick in and blow it out. It’s not really so much an issue for visitors as it is for residents, who have more long-term exposure.”
Birch said not a lot has been happening with the volcano the past few days, and that the media seems far more occupied with Donald Trump and U.S. immigration of late than they are with lava flows.
“We’re kind of in a holding pattern now,” he said.
The popular Kona Coast of Hawaii Big Island is far away from the island’s active volcano. JIM BYERS PHOTO
Birch said the small earthquakes are still going on and there are some new fissures. There’s some ash in the air, as well, although it tends to come and go and hasn’t had a major impact on tourist areas.
One of the biggest problems the island – and the state as a whole – is facing is uncertainty. The volcano only answers to Mother Nature, and scientists can’t know for certain what’s going to happen.
“It could be weeks, it could be months,” Birch said. “I think right now people have an understanding of what the situation is and where the lava is flowing. I think the challenge now is to find places where people can experience the volcano as an attraction. We’re working on that.”
Birch told me the tourism board is working with travel agents and consumer and trade media to get the message out that the Big Island is open for business.
“We recently had 15 agents come over and we’ll probably increase the number of fam (familiarization) trips. We also had one of our scientists from the University of Hawaii do 20 interviews from coast to coast on news shows on the mainland.”
They also have a social media campaign underway, using the hashtags #ExploreIslandofHawaii and #VisitIslandofHawaii.
Still, in the end, there’s very little Birch or anyone else can do except wait. And hope that the worst is over.
