Hawaii Takes a Big Hit as It Waits for Tourists to Come Flying Back

Kaylee Baduria isn’t yet 3 years old, but she knows something isn’t right. She keeps asking her parents, “You go work today?” Donald and Lisa Baduria just shake their heads.

Until Sept. 11, their family was a Hawaiian success story. The couple worked full time at the Hilton Hawaiian Village on fabled Waikiki Beach, she as a waitress and he as a storeroom clerk. They brought home more than $60,000 a year, enough to buy a comfortable townhouse in the leafy suburb of Mililani.

Then hijackers slammed airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Seven days later, Lisa was laid off. Then it was Donald’s turn. His boss gave him the bad news on his 10th anniversary as a Hilton employee.

“We kind of saw it coming, but we didn’t expect it to come so fast,” Baduria said. “I’m just trying to be strong, because we’ve got two little girls and a mortgage and everything. If you worry too much, then everything unravels.”

Unless more tourists start flying again soon, Hawaii’s economy itself is in danger of unraveling. Virtually every tourist who visits Hawaii--99%--arrives by plane. So while other vacation spots across the United States can salvage business by urging an airplane-averse public to drive, Hawaii has no such fallback.

Since Sept. 12, when not a single airline passenger arrived in the islands, the number of visitors coming to Hawaii has rebounded substantially, and the daily count has been slowly ticking upward. But arrivals are still running more than 20% below normal, with the higher-spending Japanese segment off by nearly 40%. Along with the fear of flying shared by Americans, some Japanese feel it would be unseemly to take a Hawaiian holiday at such a time of trial for the United States.

The $11-billion tourism industry accounts for nearly a third of all civilian jobs in the state and a quarter of its gross state product, according to the Hawaii Tourism Authority. State economists estimate that Hawaii could lose from $500 million to $1 billion in visitor spending by the end of the year.

“This is the most serious challenge we have ever faced,” said Gov. Ben Cayetano, who flew to Japan last week to try to woo back that vital market.

It is too soon to say how the U.S. military action will affect travel trends. However, hotels, restaurants and retailers aren’t waiting to take action. Faced with a drastic drop in business, they have cut staff and sliced the hours of those employees still working. In the last two weeks of September, 9,500 new unemployment claims were filed with the state, four times the normal rate. Claims by hotel workers have jumped twentyfold.

“It’s a house of cards, because pretty soon, mortgages won’t be paid and other institutions are going to feel it, as this seeps down through the economy,” said Sharon Weiner, group vice president for DFS Hawaii, a major retailer. “We’re doing what we can to keep the patient alive. The state’s future rests on the shoulders of the visitors bureau, how successful it is in marketing Hawaii.”

The Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau is promoting the islands as a balm for the spirit, a place for rejuvenation, “where worries drift out to sea on floral trade winds.” Travel companies are taking a more direct tack, dangling bargains to lure skittish travelers back onto planes. Pleasant Hawaiian Holidays, the largest wholesaler of vacations to Hawaii, just launched a “Keep ‘em Flying” special that offers a week in Waikiki for $359, including air fare from Los Angeles.

Some folks suggest that there’s no better time to come to Hawaii, with uncrowded restaurants and room to roam. “You can pick your spot on the beach,” said Tiffanie Carlile of Portland, Ore., strolling hand-in-hand in Waikiki with her husband, Rhett. “And we haven’t had to wait at dinner.”

There is a glimmer of hope that Hawaii’s isolation may work in its favor. This remote archipelago seems far off the terrorist radar screen, Rhett Carlile pointed out.

“We are known as a safe destination, and in reality we are,” said Barbara Okamoto, vice president of the visitors bureau. “People who are a little leery about taking overseas trips can come to Hawaii and get a lot that’s exotic and different from their normal life and still have the comforts of being within America.”

Some U.S. travelers are opting to head to Hawaii rather than across the Atlantic. “We’re almost on the opposite side of the world” from the terrorist attacks, observed Bobby Shiowaki, as he delicately speared a strawberry and swirled it in molten chocolate at the Godiva boutique in Waikiki. His shop was empty, but he was optimistic. “The tourists will come back,” he predicted.

Meanwhile, local businesses are asking Hawaii residents to “play tourist,” urging them to eat out more often, go shopping and sample top-notch hotels at hefty discounts. While some residents are game, others find the commercials grating.

“I get kind of offended,” said Sheri Rodrigues, a pantry assistant at the Sheraton Waikiki. “I’d love to go to Ala Moana and go shopping today, but I can’t, I have my car payment to pay.” Like many people here, she and her husband, Thomas, work three jobs between them to cope with Hawaii’s high cost of living.

Both have had their hours cut back at the Sheraton, but he still has his morning job as a high school cafeteria manager.

“At least we have something coming in to help with the mortgage, if worst comes to worst and we have to find other jobs,” she said. “Except I don’t even think we could find other jobs. There are thousands of people looking.”

Ask Krista Kelley, who went on furlough in January after 28 years as a Continental flight attendant and has no prospects of getting her job back any time soon. “It is bleak,” she said. “I can’t tell you how many places I’ve gone to look for work. The lines are so long applying for any kind of job, and I’m applying for everything.”

The governor has called the state Legislature into session later this month to consider $1 billion in new construction, along with other stimulus measures. The visitors bureau is seeking an additional $10 million in marketing money from legislators, on top of its $45-million annual budget.

After a prolonged economic slump through the 1990s, Hawaii enjoyed a banner tourism year in 2000, with a record 6,948,595 visitors flocking to the islands.

“We thought we were doing so well,” Lisa Baduria recalled. “We had a wonderful year, we were like ‘Wow, it’s back,’ and we felt secure. And then all of sudden, it was taken out from underneath us.”

Recently, she and her husband, Donald, were called back to work at the hotel for a few days during a convention, but their future remains a question mark. The Badurias are talking to their loan officers to see if they can get a reprieve on their mortgage and car payments while they subsist on unemployment benefits. And they are making the most of their extra time with Kaylee and her baby sister, Dominique. Donald Baduria has been playing the guitar more, hanging out with his buddies and his brother Daniel, an Air Force mechanic who just got his orders to report for duty.

“It’s given us time to reflect and reevaluate,” Donald Baduria said. “We’ve got a lot of friends and family looking out for us. When I think of what those people in New York went through--they were just trying to make a living and never knew what wiped them out--to see them running, it kind of makes your worries seem real minute.”