Bahamas Should Look to Hawaiian Model of Tourism Development

by Andrew Allen

A five-minute taxi-ride from the Hawaiian capital, Honolulu, lies the resort area of Waikiki, one of the principal hotel/condominium destinations in the world.

As intensively developed as Paradise Island, but on an altogether different scale (Waikiki comprises thousands of acres and boasts a Hilton, a Hyatt and a Sheraton among many, many other recognisable resort names) it differs from our tourist product in a number of respects.

Firstly, as anyone educated in Hawaiian history knows (and as anyone generally acquainted with the interactions between white westerners and other peoples over the last few centuries might guess), the historical exclusion of the native Polynesians from Hawaii's success has been near total.

A proud race with a large, cultured aristocracy had been reduced, by the beginning of the last century, to a rump population of manual workers occupying all of the least enviable statistical distinctions (in terms of education, employment, literacy, health etc).

From a population that was maybe as high as half a million when Captain Cook arrived in the 1770s, the 'native' today accounts for less than two per cent of a total population of around one and a half million.

In addition to the mainlanders that have come, many thousands of people of Japanese, Chinese and Korean descent have now joined him in his home, making the original pure-blooded "Kanaka" a rarity indeed.

For all this, in modern times Hawaiians (native, oriental and "Haole" (Caucasian) have reconciled themselves with their history and set about making their state a unique and rather successful tourist destination with living standards on a par with the mainland. And the development model of Waikiki is a good example of how they have done it.

For the vast majority of this tourist and resort district remains in the hands of a local trust, set up by one of the original developers of Hawaii, Charles Reed Bishop. This trust operates, among other things, the Kamehameha school, which, on account of the wealth of the trust itself is, by some measures, the second most affluent educational establishment in the United States (after Harvard University).

As the largest landowner in Hawaii, the Bishop Trust commits itself to two controversial but arguably commendable principles. The first is that it concentrates on giving preferential treatment to Hawaiians of native stock, who have been largely the victims of the islands economic success since annexation. Any native Hawaiian who graduates from Kamehameha school is entitled to a paid university place in any US-based institution.

Secondly, it maintains a strict policy of holding the land that it owns, leasing, rather than selling to the many hotels, condominiums and second-home developments that occupy its land in Waikiki and elsewhere.

In addition to private concerns like the Bishop Trust, the State of Hawaii itself has, like in most parts of the developed world where tourism is dominant, not shied away from leasing land to the tourist industry.

If it, or indeed a European resort destination like Bruges, Ghent or Amsterdam, ever proposed to give away thousands of acres to a developer in return for jobs one can only imagine the kind of response that would be forthcoming from locals.

To the extent to which Hawaii, like many parts of Europe and North America, has managed to leverage its tourist product in this way, it has managed to remain in control of the pace and nature of its development and to ensure maximum benefit not only in terms of employment, but in terms of the public institutions upon which its social development rests.

The danger in the case of a place like the Bahamas is that, having failed to formulate any meaningful plan for any real local control of the industry, politicians find themselves locked in a shallow numbers game, with the whole debate limited in principle to the calculus of jobs and investment dollars, rather than sustainability or long-term alienation of land and resources.

This has led to the cultivation of an instant-satisfaction mentality among the electorate, much of which currently has no interest in the industries by which we live other than jobs.

Worse still, it has meant the steady erosion of any prospect of future generations being in a position to do any better, as the land and resources currently at our disposal are being disposed of at so fast a rate.

This is not a political statement. It is a plain, cold and uncontrovertible statement of fact.

Fifty years ago, in a very different Bahamas, Stafford Sands began to trade Bahamian land and resources for development. He did so at a time when most Bahamians were innately excluded from the issues of land use and development, when tourism was a new and unpredictable industry worldwide and hence when such a frenzied and excited entry into the new industry was uncontroversial.

It seems reasonable, against the backdrop of economic history since Sands' time, to have expected his trade-off of land and licences for jobs and investment to have matured and evolved into something like the Hawaiian or European model, where local authorities have leveraged for themselves a proactive role in their own development and begin to exercise the kind of planning and leadership that obtains in those places.

But today, after countless billions invested in our tourist industry, we appear no closer to mobilising the kind of financial or political resources to allow us to make even the most simple planning and pro-active development initiatives for our most important industry.

Take West End, which is now to be the location of what may become the largest investment in the history of the Bahamas.

This sliver of coastal land, just forty miles from West Palm Beach, Florida, has sat idle for many years, with each party accusing the other for the area's latest woes. The fact is that both of the last two governments ought to be frankly embarrassed that, gifted with an almost ready-made resort town closer than any other human habitation to the United States, it has taken them so long to revitalise West End and that, to do so, they have fallen back on the same kind of terms that the late Stafford Sands was using more than a generation ago.

Without the blinders of a British colonialist bureaucratic mindset, a troop of Macaque monkeys could have transformed West End into a successful tourist and second home destination on its own terms, and could have lined up a thousand Mr Ginns, Mr Kerzners or Mr Izmirlians as obliging partners. Further, it could have done so without conveying any crown land to anyone.

Waikiki, thousands of miles from the continental US, was developed in just that way, as was South Florida. No giveaways, no pleas to investors for more and more jobs, just a solid plan for the long-term development of a resort area, based upon the long-term interests of the local community.

All that was needed was a proactive government, ready to empower a local authority, to enunciate a consistent zoning/crown land policy for the area, to aggressively organise transport between South Florida and West End and to actively look for developers interested in leasing (!!!!!) land in the new resort area. By advertising worldwide (just as you see any time you pick up The Economist magazine and browse through the 'tenders' section in the back) countries and local authorities all over the world take the lead in developing far less naturally favourable resort areas than West End.

Of course, politicians will tell you it is not so easy and that a giveaway is the only way to get the jobs and investment. They will tell you that no government or authority can or does successfully take such a lead. All of which suggests they are less likely to be caught reading the Economist than the said troop of Macaque monkeys.