Long before Rob Kvidt became co-founder and editor of Beat of Hawaii, travel was already an obsession. Growing up first in rural Eastern Washington and later in Olympia, he collected travel brochures and dreamed about the places in them, including Hawaii. A local travel agent saved outdated brochures for him to take home, and trips to Sea-Tac to pick up his grandparents became another opportunity. While waiting for them, Rob watched international flights arrive and depart and wondered where he might go one day. In 1980, a year out of college, he finally found out, spending about eight weeks traveling across Europe by bus with a group of other young travelers. He came home hooked.
After hearing about a young Rick Steves, who was selling pianos in Seattle while beginning to share his European travel advice, Rob attended one of his Saturday morning slideshows. Rob and Rick met up. That in turn helped fuel his interest in finding a way to travel more, and he soon landed a job as a United Airlines reservations sales representative in Seattle. In those days, employees were given blank tickets they could fill out when they wanted to travel, and Rob made good use of them for two years before moving into a career in higher education. With an undergraduate degree in English and an M.Ed. in higher education administration, he spent more than 20 years working in college admissions, mostly at the director level for public and private universities, including serving as director of admissions for a University of Pittsburgh campus.
Hawaii became part of Rob’s life long before he lived here. For two decades, his college admissions work brought him to all the Hawaiian islands about multiple times yearly to recruit students, visit high schools, and get to know families along the way. He often wondered what living in Hawaii would be like, although making the move and earning a living here seemed far more complicated than visiting for work. Eventually, in his 40s, he decided to find out and moved to his favorite island, Kauai. His background in higher education didn’t translate easily to the local job market, so he offered independent college counseling and worked as a sales manager at Macy’s while considering what might come next. He was preparing to begin training with TSA when co-editor Jeff Tucker convinced him to abandon that plan and see whether the two of them could build a travel business together.
The idea that eventually became Beat of Hawaii had an unlikely trial run during a trip to Australia. Blogging was still relatively new, and Rob decided to experiment by writing about the trip for his mother and other family members. When he returned, he began looking at who was blogging about Hawaii and noticed that the websites he found were largely being written from the mainland. Since he and Jeff actually lived here, Rob thought they could bring something different to it. He came up with the idea and the name Beat of Hawaii, and the site officially began publishing in 2008. At first, very few people were reading. Jeff finally decried they either needed to make it really work or move on, and began regularly contributing comments to other publications, and most notably, fellow kurmudgeon Arthur Frommer’s travel website. A few months later, Frommer discovered BOH and told his readers, “If you are a fan of the Hawaiian Islands, rush quick to Beat of Hawaii.” The resulting attention changed the trajectory of the young site.
Today, Rob and Jeff work on Beat of Hawaii together every day, although they often approach a story from different directions. Jeff generally finds and initially vets most subjects, conducts the first round of research, and develops an initial draft. Rob then works through the writing and reporting, checking facts, links and imagery while looking closely at tone, structure, reader perspective, Hawaii nuance, travel practicality, and whether the story is supported by the facts. They develop ideas together, disagree sometimes, and compromise when necessary. The pace can be intense, particularly when Hawaii travel news is moving quickly, and BOH has become less a job left at the office and more something that travels with them almost everywhere.
That suits Rob, because travel never stopped being part of his life after those childhood brochures and afternoons watching airplanes at Sea-Tac. Much of his travel today is connected in some way to Beat of Hawaii, whether he is elsewhere in the islands, on the mainland, in Europe, or exploring the South Pacific. At home on Kauai, Rob loves swimming in the ocean year-round and remains drawn to the lifestyle and culture that first made him wonder what it would be like to live here. After nearly 25 years as a full-time Hawaii resident, that hasn’t worn off. Island life is not for everyone, but it fits him fine.