We have vacationed in Hawaii about 35 times since 1990 and written at least a dozen travel articles. Since we live on the Main Line, every one of our articles included people in Hawaii with connections to home: from Lt. Michael Brown, a Villanova graduate and officer on the Pearl Harbor-based Lake Erie, a Ticonderoga class guided missile cruiser, to neighbors from Bryn Mawr who were on vacation, to an Eagles' cheerleader from Narberth, and lots and lots of others.
For quite a few years, until around 2003, we and other tourists were regarded as welcome guests and visitors. And then, something happened to the attitudes of the Hawaiians and all of a sudden we were regarded as coins in the cash register. This lack of Aloha spirit seemed to coincide with the inauguration of the Republican Governor Linda Lingle.
They changed the linens every other day, instead of daily. We still had plenty of clean towels. They closed the top level amenity room and started actively selling time shares. They shut down or demolished the older hotels and remodelled them, coped with extensive mold, and doubled and tripled the room rates.
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The attitudes of the housekeeping staff changed. Little things that came automatically had to be requested, such as the daily newspaper.
And attitudes of most of the workers who interacted with the tourists changed. Instead of replying to a legitimate complaint, the answer was, "We're busy. Can you do it yourself?" And instead of graciously checking us into the hotels, we had to cool our heels and wait for the spirit to move someone to come to us or be told to "always carry the card with you because guest inspections can happen at anytime and if you don't have the card, you will be escorted out."
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Besides the hotels, restaurant servers were always a little too busy to be prompt, bus drivers reluctantly lowered the bus for boarding and exiting, and taxi drivers tried to cheat by sending two cabs for 7 people instead of the one van that was requested.
The sun, sand, palm trees, sunsets, ocean, and gentle breezes and surfing waves still remain beautiful and welcome. However, there are a lot of closer places to the East Coast than Hawaii. And the beach chairs and umbrella concessions have taken over a large part of the Waikiki Beach and the beach boys no longer project their romantic image. They act like surly businessmen.
We're not sure we're going back.
