Even though Hawaii's economy is lucky enough to have a huge amount of income come from tourism, taxes on tourism are slowly getting higher to make up for government spending. Hawaii should leave the tax alone instead of raising it so the prices won't scare away tourist.
So far Hawaii isn't having a problem with tourism because tourist are beginning to spend more. In the first 9 months of 2011, the total visitor expenditures increased 14.7%. The recent recording on how we're doing is as of September of 2011 where the total visitor spending rose 19.7% while visitor arrivals were up 4%. As you can see, our tourism economics are doing pretty well. The Hawaii tourism authority predicts that in 2012 the growth rates of visitor arrivals and visitor expenditures are expected to go up even more! But according to the locale new a few nights ago, Hawaii is relying on tourist from Asia. Counties like Japan and Korea is what's supporting us now. Obama is suppose to discuss with Asian counties on how we can help Hawaii's economic stability. But the thing is, these tourist will continue to come if they don't realize that they are spending much more than they should, and could be spending less in other locations.
The Senate thinks it's smart to raise taxes a little bit to even out the government spending. No one get's hurt right? In 2009 the senate approved on a tourist tax increase on thing such as hotel rooms. Hotel occupancy was down to 60% says hotel executives. "Raising tourist tax is the worst idea". Why? We can't afford to do things like raise taxes like that because Hawaii isn't a business destination like San Francisco and New York. Nearly everyone who comes to Hawaii is a "discretionary dollar", so making them feel that the money they have is worth less than is ridiculous. We should be making them feel that the money they're spending is pretty much fair to what they could be spending in California for example, but they get a different experience here. Basically we don't want to tourist feel that Hawaii is too expensive for them to come here, or that they are getting ripped-off. States like Texas, Illinois, and Massachusetts have a sales tax of 6.25% while lucky states like Oregon, New Hampshire, Montana, Delaware, and Alaska have no sales tax. Hawaii has a sales tax of 4% on everything. Even though it sounds low, some economists think it's like having a 10-12% sales tax because things are taxed multiple things down the line. Things in Hawaii are very expensive because everything is shipped here.
Tourism effects our economy much more than think it does, in fact tourism effects 75% of all jobs in Hawaii. If something goes wrong and less visitors come or less spend money, the people of Hawaii will suffer from it. There about 46,000 people in Hawaii who are out of work. If these tourist go elsewhere taxpayers will be left with yet another budget deficit.
Tourism in Hawaii might seem to be doing well right now. But if there's something that makes the tourist feel that they could be better off spending their money somewhere else, it's going to make a negative impact on Hawaii's Economy.
