Hawaii has long felt like an invitation. Now some visitors say it feels like a warning. From guilt-driven messaging to soaring costs, longtime travelers are asking pressing questions.
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262 thoughts on “Shamed at the Shoreline: When Did Visiting Hawaii Start Feeling Like a Crime?”
Awful lot of bragging here about where else people want to spend their privileged tourist dollars. Go on then, and let Hawaii heal.
They keep raising prices while treating tourists like garbage. I’m personally going to start traveling in Africa more, great bang for your dollar, and I was treated with the utmost respect and courtesy. A total 180 from Hawaii
Spent over 30 years going to Maui. We were always welcomed back as family. Unil 2024. It had all changed. People were unfriendly and at times almost rude. Wr did not return in 2025.
I disagree with the shaming message. It’s the reader’s reaction to ‘house rules’ or expectations set that’s in question. As a child, were you not given direction by your parents on how to behave when visiting family, or stranger’s homes? Hawaii asks its guests for kindness, civility and respect. Tourists’ actions equates to honoring and acknowledging your hosts’ home, and protects a delicate ecosystem. Why is that shaming? I was shamed in NYC for ordering at an Italian deli a “coffee with cream and sugar”. Bellowing from the other side of the counter I was corrected with rolling of the eyes, and then educated about Coffee Regular. This “shaming” was okay though, because just like Hawaii, the NYC deli proprietor was setting the house rules for me as his tourist guest. Live Aloha, folks, during your visits. Mahalo.
There’s also the thought you should treat guest with the utmost respect and make sure they’re comfortable. Idk how you were raised, but I was raised to make sure my guests are comfortable even if it inconveniences me
This is blowback from the abuse of the tourism industry.
I promise I will not bring any homeless people from the mainland. I will also not bring my broken down car/refrigerator/washing machine to leave on the side of the road. I have experienced all of that the last trip I took to the islands. Tourists are being used as scapegoats when we really are the golden goose.
Locals love to shame tourists. Locals are the ones abandoning cars, then torching them. They are the ones who litter the roads with old appliances, too cheap to pay $7 to take it to the landfill, or better yet, to recycle it at Hammerhead. They are the ones who have homes/rentals that – from the outside – look like the welcoming mat for an episode of Hoarders. It’s the locals who move to Las Vegas – and end up loving it, then do to Vegas what they complain mainlanders are doing to Hawaii. The hypocrisy is so rich, so deep and so extensive, I lack the character allowance to detail it all.
I only just realized that on the US continent the visitor industry shuts down in the winter months in places that are too cold, or in the summer months in places that are too hot. In Hawai’i we never get a break from the rat race, it’s 12 months of having to be nice to strangers and our natural resources never get a chance to recover.
The Aloha Spirit is a colonizer construct, with pono behavior being more to Hawaiians. The concept of Aloha also includes standing up to defend the people and places that you love. In that light, resisting being overwhelmed by tourism is also a valid expression of Aloha.
You obviously have no knowledge of ski resorts on the mainland! When the snow melts, everyone comes back for boating and hiking.
…or that Hawaii isn’t the only 2 season state.
Um, the idea that haole is a racist word in Hawaii and Polynesia is not correct. Ha’ole can be benign and just descriptive…..or can be a derogatory word depending on context.
Polynesia does not have that word in their language that I’m aware of…it originated in Hawaii.