Hawaii’s Next Phase Is to See If Tourism Can Work for Locals, Too

The tennis courts of Mauna Kea Beach Resort, set just above the coastline on the island of Hawaii, are busy once again, having settled into a new pandemic paradigm. Tennis pro Wayne Barnes uses a pair of tongs to deliver red licorice strips, treats for the pint-size players who’ve completed their 30-minute lesson. He tries to keep the kids from crowding closely, then looks over his shoulder toward a group of teens arriving for the next session. “Keep your masks on until you’re on the court,” he calls out, then makes sure each has an orange bracelet indicating that they passed a temperature check.

Over the winter holidays, Barnes’s tennis clinics were the busiest they’d been since the novel coronavirus went global. Then again, anything would be an uptick from basically zero. When Covid-19 struck, the Aloha State instituted one of the country’s strictest lockdowns, blocking international travel and effectively halting domestic tourism by requiring incoming passengers to quarantine for 14 days. Hotels closed, condos shuttered, and the verdant archipelago—where at least a quarter of all jobs are connected to the tourism industry—saw its unemployment rate rise from less than 4%, the lowest in the country, to 15%, one of the highest.