In Hawaii, Reimagining Tourism for a Post-Pandemic World

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11. It's always a trade-off

I haven‘t been back go Hawai‘i in years, or Iceland in decades, but I go down to Barcelona regularly, was just there Monday and Tuesday. Frankly, I‘m even enjoying the unchoked streets, the lack of street hustlers trying to sell me trinkets or pick my pockets. This is getting back to the old Barcelona where I lived as a teenager. I know one guy from NYC who moved to Zürich to marry his Swiss girlfriend. They visited Barcelona on a vacation and fell in love with it to the point that they opened an affiliate of the company they work for, learned Spanish, and are both taking evening Catalan classes.

The quality of life in these places is sometimes in direct proportion to the level of tourism, but sometimes in inverse proportion to tourism. Not every solution is ideal for everyone.