 Okay, we're back. We're live here for Community Matters. It's five o'clock block on a given Tuesday with Jerry Agrusa. He's a professor at the TIM School, Tribal Industry Management School in the Shilah College of Business. And he joins us from, is that right? He joins us from in front of that building. Yes, this is our Tim School. And yes, we are now part of Shilah College of Business. Very excellent, Jerry. I haven't seen you in a while and it's really a delight. And I saw that article in the paper about the study, the study about how people felt, that is, people from far away, how they felt about local foods and local culture. Can you talk about that study? I mean, this is something that, you know, everybody is interested in this. The local people are also interested in this study. So tell us about the study, what it found and what it means. Well, we sent out a survey to travelers that are from the U.S. mainland coming to Hawaii. And we asked a number of questions, but three main questions was the willingness to pay. Willingness to pay for authentic Hawaiian cultural experiences and how much they're willing to pay. Number two, willingness to pay for items that are more sustainable. And number three, willingness to pay for locally grown food products, meaning produce, meat, fish, etc. So what we found is a very high percentage. You know, over 70% said that they're willing to pay more for authentic Hawaiian cultural experiences. And what we found is almost 20% were willing to pay 15% or more. For locally grown products, we got, we received almost 80% people were willing to pay extra on their food bill, their restaurant or their hotel food bill. And 20%, more than 20% said they'll pay a higher than 16% or more. And one of the things that they stated was they're trying to lower their carbon footprint, you know, if we, because we're out here in the middle of the ocean, you know, it, it takes a lot to get here. And there is this, you know, with sustainability, they are people stating that they want to not use such a high carbon footprint. You know, we have global warming, etc. So one of the folks that I spoke with, they came with their, their, their son, a lady, and she wanted the first things they did when they got to Hawaii was they wanted to plant trees to offset the carbon footprint from the airplane from LA to Honolulu. And I was just like, wow. And then one of the things they did was they actually worked, they were there for, they were here for eight days. And one night they went and rebuilt an ancient Hawaiian fish pond. And she said that the young person, 12 years old, that's all he could talk about, not surfing, not taking a scuba diver lesson, not snorkeling. That was the thing for him. And I think that one of the things that people have changed is, you know, they want to come on vacation, they want to learn something. And one of the great, unique things about Hawaii is our unique culture that differentiates us from, say, other sun, sand and sea destinations like Cancun. You know, we have this culture and we need to promote it. And as you can see in the results of the study, people are willing to pay more for this experience. And I think that this can help not just tourism as a whole, but it can help with, you know, we have a little bit of animosity these days with the local population. Because when we had COVID, when it hit, you know, 216,000 people were laid off like this. And we had the lockdown. And then all of a sudden we opened up, but tourism didn't come back. So people were able to go to the beach with no, not even looking for a parking place. People were able to drive on H1, like it's a Sunday morning. But they forgot that, you know, all their neighbors are unemployed because it isn't just the direct worker that was affected, the hotel, the restaurant. But we have all the auxiliary operations that support this industry. Like this one person said to me, well, we don't need tourism. And I said, well, what does your family do? My dad is a truck driver. Okay, what does he drive? He delivers fish. I said, was he laid off? Yes. Well, because the fish industry is so connected to the tourism industry. Because there are so many folks when they come to Hawaii, especially those from the mid-America, they want to eat fresh fish. And that, you know, all those folks were affected. And I think that we need to do a better job of letting the local public know how much this is the economic engine of Hawaii. At this time, more people are employed directly or indirectly by tourism. And we need to let people know that, you know, we need to support this industry. Now, is every tourist a good tourist? No. But we need to, you know, just like not everybody in any field is excellent. But we have enough good tourists. And what this study shows is we have enough folks that are willing to not just do the right thing, but pay for it. And, you know, I don't know if you saw this study that I did in May of 2020. I did a study on US mainland travelers willingness to take a COVID test. We found that 69% of the thousand people we surveyed said that they were willing to take a COVID test before coming. And 62% said they'd take a second one before they landed. This is May 2020. So we got the study out there and we sent it in, you know, the tourism bureau in the governor's office, et cetera. And then they in October of 2020 decided to do the COVID tests. But I was in a meeting with some people and they said, well, who should pay for the COVID test? And one person said, the tourism authority should pay. But I was like, what? The tourists should pay for it. Why? By putting the tourists to pay for it, you're acting, what you're doing is you're putting in an emission charge. And it's just like going into a museum. When the museums were free, you get a different clientele than someone who pays $25. Here we have $200 COVID test. So me, my wife and two kids are getting on a plane. We're spending $800 before we even take off. So we're already committed to spending money. And that's the type of tourist we need here. We need a higher spending tourist, people who are willing to spend. And those that took the COVID test already committed to it. And this is before we had the vaccine. And then we continued with that testing, you know, all the way until June. And then we allowed local residents that had a COVID card not to take the test. And then in July, we've allowed the tourist. And I think that we should go back to that. Because COVID is now, we saw the governor go on television a few weeks ago and tell everybody not to come. He did that because the hospitals are full. You know, our friends that work in the medical field, especially the nurses, they're just so tired. You know, they're just so, so tired from just trying to keep people alive on COVID. And, you know, they tell me 95% of everybody who's in the hospital is not vaccinated. And this virus is devastating to the body. It really, really is. And what science says is, if you've been vaccinated, it's just not going to take as a toll on your body as great. How many are tourists in the hospitals? Right. I haven't heard of one. I haven't heard of one. Now, do I have heard of tourists being in hospital because they fell off a hiking trail and broke their leg? And, you know, there was one person I know, I heard of, that they had slippers on and they were hiking in wet. What do you expect? You know, most of these people are just working in an office building and the only time they get up is to get a donut. And now they're going to go like on a Willy trail. So, Jerry, what affected the governor's statement that he didn't want people to come? What effect did that have both in the numbers and in the psychological reaction of those who might otherwise come? I think what it did was it caused people to cancel the trips further down the line. But he had to do this because the hospitals were overwhelmed. It's just full. When they tell you that if you get a heart attack, you can't come to hospital A. You have to go to hospital B. You know, I'm at a heart attack age. I don't want to have to go somewhere else because some guy didn't want to take a vaccine. And, you know, a number of stories where a person had cancer treatment and another person needed this other surgery, they had to cancel because there's no room in the hospital because 95% of everyone in the hospital is not vaccinated. This is science. This isn't someone's right to do. And we need to do what other countries that have opened up with tourism like Great Britain, what do they say? You have to have a COVID card. You've got to take a COVID negative COVID test before you leave in the 72 hours. And then you got to take another one when you land. And we could do that. We're an island. Nobody drives through here. And we would then be the safest destination. And then we can charge the premium price. We could be the, we could be the bomb, as they say. We could be it. Yeah. And people respect that. Yes. Back to your survey for a moment. I think just between the lines, the reason that they're happy to pay more, the reason they're happy to have tests last year is because they respect Hawaii. They don't want to hurt Hawaii. They don't want to be a burden on Hawaii. They're good, as you say, they're good tourists. And a good tourist is willing to spend money to preserve the culture, to preserve the health of the people, to treat Hawaii as a special place and not to dirty it up somehow. And the question is, how did you find the good tourists as opposed to the bad ones? I didn't find anyone. I actually had to pay a company to send out the survey because we have now the COVID criteria. We're at level orange as a university. The IRB said that we're not allowed to go face to face. So I had to actually hire a company. And we've done a number of research projects where we've hired Qualtracks, M-Turk, and now it's called Mavido. Mavido used to be Survey Monkey. They bought it out. And then Omnitrack has helped me with some local company, Omnitrack. I want to thank Chris Cam. He's the president of Omnitrack. He's been very, very kind to me. He helped me with a study that we're doing on local residents on regenerative tourism in Kauai. So we're still trying to get that article published. So, yeah, that's the next one. Can you talk about what you have going on down line in these surveys? Sure. So we just completed this one. We're doing another one on looking at images and on what tourists, when they see a perception of an image as an advertisement, would they be more willing to see themselves in that picture? And then we're looking at it from a picture that the hotel sends out versus a person posting their own. So that's one that we're really working on right now. The regenerative tourism from the resident standpoint in Kauai, we've had it at two journals that we went for the top, top journal, because right now that seems to be what our university is shooting for, the AA. And then we went to, they kept it for a while and then they kicked it back. We made the changes and then the editor said he didn't think so. So then we went to the Journal of Travel Research and then yesterday they kicked it back after dancing around with it. So we're now with another tourism perspective. So it's very important to find out about these things on both sides of the equation. But you know, I mean, and I say that because I think we have to take, and you are taking a close look at how this works. This is a time to examine, don't you think? So we can, you know, make changes, tune it up going forward. And I guess I would ask you based on the surveys and and also your expertise and your teaching, what do we need to do to tune this thing up so that it stays sustainable and that it grows and becomes a worthy sector of a relatively speaking it because we're never going to be very diversified, but a relatively speaking economy. Well, you know, one of the things is, you know, the good thing is we were the product wasn't damaged, right? COVID didn't damage the product, right? We have the clean air, we have the clean water, the culture hasn't been damaged, we haven't had an oil spill or an earthquake, all these things that come into effect. So the product that people come here for hasn't been damaged. And I knew that that we were going to come back very quickly because the product wasn't damaged. It was that people's fear, first of all, we didn't know, we didn't have any vaccine for COVID. We weren't even sure how the transmission was, what was the vector? You know, we were getting different reports all over the place. You know, so once we figured that out, and then Wednesday invented the vaccine, we started to ramp up and we really, really were rolling. The challenge was that we had folks that were getting sick here and the hospitals were full. And the reason the governor had to go on TV to say that was that the medical staff was saying, what happens if we have a real catastrophe? If we have a, you know, something happens, a building collapses like we saw in Florida. They can't handle it. It was full. They are full and they're tired. And I tell you, the great thing was that they got whatever, how many hundred nurses to come here to give these folks a relief because they were overwhelmed. You know, we have two nieces that are nurses and they both tell us all the time. You know, Uncle Jerry, it's just so much work and it's so frustrating when they see somebody who's 20 or 30 or 40 years old and they're in the hospital for 20 days and they have to put them on a ventilator. And they said, we have to keep them unconscious because they're gasping for air. And what my niece said to me is, it's like when you caught a fish as a kid and you put it off the hook and you put it and it didn't go in a bucket of water if it's just on the ledge and it's gills. He says, that's what it looks like. And she says, sometimes there's nothing we can do. Not tragic. When did this happen to the extent to the point where it began, changing the reopening, diminishing the number of turrets, diminishing the industry? I guess it started in July. That's when the capacity of the hospitals couldn't handle it. They were just full. We went from having 50 cases a day to 800, then 1,000. Yesterday we had 160,000 people that's positive for COVID in the United States and nobody's saying anything. I was at the beach on Saturday night and there were 800 people protesting in front of the zoo saying not to wear masks. This is an airborne virus. Before anybody could spell COVID and you went to the dentist, he put or she put a mask on before she drilled your mouth. Why? Because the germs from her mouth can't go in your mouth and maybe you do have bad breath and maybe that's why they worry. But most likely it goes to the germs. When I was a kid and I got cut and I had to get stitches, the doctor put a mask on before he stitched me. Why? From the germs from his mouth going in here. Masks stop the germs. Now, we have many kinds of masks. Why this great country of ours doesn't make N95 masks and hand them out is beyond my comprehension. I go to the park and someone has a dog. They have three dog bags to pick up the poop. There should be masks. Every time you get on an airplane, everybody should get an N95 mask. Not a bag of peanuts, not a bag of pretzels. I know peanuts are out now because allergic pretzels. We should go to N95 masks. They should be made in America. Why? Because this virus is not going away for a while. And this is something that I'm really, really disappointed in the government because they're dumping billions of dollars in everything and we're not taking care of the stuff that we need to be taken care of. We need to understand that we're going to be wearing masks for a while. Now, if Hawaii, if we can get the majority of everybody vaccinated and we can lower them out of COVID, then we can be a destination where no one comes in because we make them take a test before they come and they test after and they have to be vaccinated and then we'll be the premier destination. Yeah, I saw that in the article about the survey and I totally agree with you. We could be a primo destination. We could be a safe, we could sell safety, we could sell health and people would come for miles around to enjoy that. And they would pay, Jeff, Jay, they would pay, Jay. People will pay. There's money. I mean, I have some slides here. If you look at the average daily rates that we had in June and July from the Hawaii Tourism Authority, it's amazing. It's especially the luxury market. You're just like, wow, up 30% from 2019, not 2020. Yeah, I'm sorry, this is a little small. But if you look, look at this. This is July. The occupancy is down, right? We lost occupancy, 2.9% for the state and the luxury market, you're down 10%. But look at the average daily rate. The average daily rate is up 36%, 36.7% and RevPARP available room up 20%, 19.3%. It's amazing. It agrees with you. People are willing to pay for health. They're willing to pay for Hawaii culture, Hawaii special foods, all that. They want to celebrate the place. We're on a roll. We're on a roll in many ways. And because people haven't traveled in two years, when I was talking to people just on the beach, they said, we usually come for a week. We're coming for two weeks this time. And they're paying. And this one couple in this family, two, three kids, they got caught without having a car on Oahu. They had to pay $300 a day for an SUV. And that's a lot of money for rent to car per day. I mean, I know you must have seen the story where it was $1,000 a day for a convertible, things like that, because artificial intelligence, we use yield management. And there was only a few rent convertibles left and they were able to charge that money. I don't know if anybody paid $1,000 a day, but I know that people are paying big, big money for hotels. You look at that West, Lahaina and Maui. I mean, they're getting real money. I've averaged daily rate 800. What's going to happen here? Are those special prices, especially in the high end market, are they going to stay that way? Are they going to soften after a while? No, I think that if we can go back and make it safe, those folks will come. There's people that have money and they spend it. People who pay $800 a night for a hotel room or $1,000 a night for a hotel room, they don't skimp. They're not going over to ABC store buying sushi there. No, no, no. They're going to Roy's and that's who you are. That's good for everybody. Do you have more slides? Do you want to go through them? That's just them. I just got a couple of things on some data. Okay. Why don't we take a look at them? Okay, yeah. So visitor spending, the total visitor spending in June was $144, $1.44 billion compared to 2019. It was a decrease, but we had a lot less tourists. But July, we had a million seats coming in. We had about little under 900,000 people for the month of July. That was a really, really good month. Can we go to the next slide, please? And then you could see that visitors from the West Coast were really coming. And part of that is because they can't go to Mexico. Are people going to Mexico? Yes. Is it dangerous? Yes. Very dangerous because there's nobody vaccinated over there. And if there is, there's very few. Same with the Caribbean. We're getting that East Coast mainland folks because that they don't have the alternative markets. And when you have the supply, you have the product that people want, you can charge. You can charge. And that's supply and demand. And people that travel 11 hours, 12 hours on an airplane to get here, they stay a little longer. They're not coming for three days. Let's look at the other side for a minute, Jerry. I mean, the unions, local five, very unhappy. They have not gotten back to their jobs. The restaurants are very unhappy. A lot of them have closed. There's not enough trade. Now, these support tourism. They're very important to tourism. And they are suffering. And maybe some of that suffering is going to be long term suffering. So what do you say to them? Well, first of all, I'm glad that some of the folks have been rehired at the hotels. We're going through a shoulder period right now. And I would keep those employees. I would keep that because we're going to be ramping up in November. And the wave is going to come so fast and so strong. I believe you're not going to even see it coming. Just what happened in June, June and then July, it just came. And that's why you had lines outside the doors from every restaurant. They can't, you know, if there was capacity issues, but they even in the hotels, they couldn't get people hired. Right now, most restaurants, food service, they're looking both front of the house, back of the house. They're looking for good people, not just people, good people, but, you know, the hotels, there were hotels that, that haven't ramped up. And they better be ready because it's going to come, they're going to come. And you can see, look at the average daily rates, even the average, the mid-sized market, they still got the money. They didn't get the discount. They weren't, you know, they might have given you the rate at 190, but then someone else is paying 500 for that same room. You know, the average daily rates are strong. So I want to ask you for some advice, Jerry. Okay. Advice to local five. What do you tell them? What's your advice to them right now in this transformational time? I hear, I've watched the news. They say that not everybody was been hired back. I would ask for a meeting and find out why. The hotels should be looking at the employees that they have that are already trained. Because what happens is when that wave came, they have to then retrain people. And one of the, you know, I was, somebody asked me a question one time, what do we do? I said, I would go back and ask, get, get my, my cooks or my waiters that I had before and give them a signing bonus. Because even $500 for them to come back, you have somebody who knows the system. They know they fit the structure. You know, when you retrain somebody, it takes you, you have to retrain me. Two people are not working at a time when you're already short staff. And, and, and then what happens is the other workers are all overwhelmed. So they are tired. I mean, go to a restaurant these days, you know, at lunch, at dinner time and in Waikiki, go to, you know, do a cheesecake and all those places. There's lines outside the door. And, you know, customers, you know, one of the sad things that's happened here that I saw during this big push, a lot of people left their manners at home. Everybody's waiting for the table. Don't go up there and yell at the hostess, what do you think? She's hiding tables. You know, and I, and I've seen, you know, I was told today that somebody asked for the COVID card in New York and a person, the customers from Texas punched. Oh, there was in the paper. I saw that in the paper. Yeah. This is insane. That's insane. It's crazy. When I asked you for your ID to drink for 21, nobody said anything. This is a mandate by the law. This isn't the waiter deciding this or the hostess. You're not allowed to, first of all, you're not allowed to touch anybody. And I heard that those were males that hit a female. They should be put in real jail. And we'll see what the DA does in New York. I'll see if she really does her work. Yeah, really, that'll be, they should be prosecuted for sure. Let me ask you more advice now. Advice to the mom and pop hotels, the little ones, the boutiques. What do you tell them? Because they've been under tremendous economic pressure. Unbelievable pressure. I know that there's some COVID money. They, we should be, you know, the sad part is the big hotels have the big lawyers that can fill out the forms the right way and get, and get, and get it. The small mom and pops, you know, same with the restaurants. They, they look at the paperwork and they says, oh, I just don't want to bother. And that's the government, you know, making things really, really complicated. And, you know, we need those, you know, those boutique hotels, we need those. That's part of the establishment of Hawaii. Yes, we have the big, the Sherithins, the Marriots, the Hilton's, but the smaller ones are the uniqueness to it. And I think that the tourists that used to come there, you know, will be back, will be back. So hang in there, hang in there. And I would have the government, you know, give them a tax break, you know, give them the tax break. That was my next question, Jerry, the government, including HTA, what is your advice to them? Well, I like the Milama program, you know, they have this Milaminer initiative that, you know, that's training people to give back. And, you know, people are willing to do that. And they want to do something unique when they come to Hawaii. And, you know, whether they're, you know, working in a Lowy or a Tarot Patch, or helping to rebuild an ancient fish pond, or just helping clean the beach cleanup. You know, there's some hotels that, especially high-end hotels on the Big Island and in Kauai, one of them is called the Cliffs, they just have these buckets. And the tourists come and ask for the bucket. And they walk along the beach in the morning and picking up the plastic and put it in there. Yeah, because they want to give back. They want the beach to be clean. Not just because they're there, but for the future. Now, did they bring the plastic to the beach? No. And is a lot of that plastic coming from Kauai residents? No. It's coming from the ocean. But they're doing their part. That's a big message. What it says is that Hawaii is like the destination resort treasure of the country. And people do treat it as a treasure. It is a treasure. And people do treasure it. Now, is there a group of folks that's saying tourists stay, go home, tourists not come here? I don't think they understand. Now, have there been bad tourists that walk in people's backyards to illegal hiking and stuff like that? Yes. Yes, we have that. But I'll tell you this. When people do that and then they fall off the trail or they get hurt and we have to send our helicopter in, I would charge them. I would charge them. You don't follow the rules. I would charge you. Charge tourists for that. You know how much it must cost for a helicopter to go and pick somebody like thousands, thousands for sure? Yeah. And I would definitely charge them for that. And I'd let people know. You know, just like we had these folks that came through with fake COVID guards. Excuse me. They couldn't spell Moderna right. At least copy it from somebody. Could copy it, you know. Go back to high school. We used to copy off someone on the sword. I mean, get that one right. And the other folks that they had COVID guards for their kids that were like six. And what do we do to them? We really need, I'll tell you, if I have a student in my class that cheats and the class sees it and then the next class, that kid is sitting in the front row smiling like nothing happened. That hurts me and that hurts the other kids. You need to be punished. And we needed, I don't know what happened to those folks, but whether the news didn't pick up on it or the state kept it quiet. But if you want to make an example, you better put it out there. Yeah. Accountability. Accountability, you can't let people know. This is what happens. Yeah, what about the people out there, local people, who don't particularly like tourists, they never like tourists. And now they say, let's limit the amount of tourism. Let's take this moment and limit it. Let's change it so it really doesn't cross our front lawn. Let's find other ways to do the economy. What do you say to them? Well, I think that that's a good idea. But what do we do now with these 200,000 people that are working in this industry that have been trained for this job? It's the same thing as being trained as a truck driver or being trained as a computer analyst. What are the skills that we have now for that can employ all these people? One of the great things about Local Five is the union. That union scale is really good and it's got the benefits. When I talk, we have international students in our classes because we have the highest percentage and highest number of international students in all of UH is the school of travel industry management. When President Trump said that if we were going to go online, that we had to, that international students couldn't stay here. Remember, we really had to scramble at the Tim School. And what that did is just showed that we had the highest number of international students in all of UH. Now don't forget, those folks pay quadruple, four times as much. So one of those is worth four local kids. What the union does is the union actually allows people to have a fair wage. A fair, fair wage. And with that, we can then get people to, if a Local Five property is getting, persons making $25 an hour, doing that same job at another hotel that's not unionized, they have to be close. They have to pay 24 or no one's going to work there. They're going to just go to the thing. So what Local Five has done is done a great job. I used to be a Local Five guy. I worked as a banquet waiter in the 80s at the Sheraton Waikiki. Alan Woodrow got me this job because he wanted me to, I want to teach a work study grant and from the National Restaurant Association. And what they wanted me to do is to go back to being a line worker to see what it's like so that when you're in the classroom, you remember, you didn't manage what it's like to be a line worker. So what do you say, Jerry, to the members of the leaders, if you will, of the hospitality industry, including the Hawaii Lodging Association and all that? What do you say to them about trying to make peace with the local people so that the local people are willing to have tourism come back, willing to have more tourists among us, willing to let tourism flower in the way that would benefit the state? What do you say to the industry as to how they should treat the local people? We need to help them understand. You need to share with them the true data. Not one time I was talking about the illegal vacation rentals, Airbnb, Vibro, those things. And I was saying how bad this was. And I got a comment from somebody says, you are just a mouthpiece for the hotels. And I said, no, not true. I have no vested interest in the hotels. Yes, do they hire my students? Yes, and I want them to continue to hire my students. But that's not what I'm speaking about. What I was speaking about is we did a study on illegal vacation rentals and what the state needed to do. They didn't realize that we've had so many of them, 25,000 illegal vacation rentals. But nobody built them. What they did was they displaced people from their houses. And first they said, oh, they only went into resort areas like Waikiki. So I know of one place where they purchased 40 apartments on Alawai. 40, 40. These investors came in. They bought 40 of them and they put them on Airbnb. Now, what happened to those people that were living on those 40? For 17 years, I lived in Discovery Bay in Waikiki, right across the street from the Hilton Live Village. And the majority of my neighbors worked in the hospitality industry. A lot of them had studios. And then if you go a little, you must admit Discovery Bay is a little high end. And it was very, very nice. I mean, you got to admit that it was really, really a beautiful place. But other places where they were having people live in studio, they had studios for $900 or $1,000 a month. And these folks worked in the hotels and they would walk down to work every day and then walk back. They didn't need a car. And they could leave at four o'clock for a 430 shift, get there 15 minutes early, have a coffee, and you're ready to give the aloha spirit. When they came in and bought all these units, and that was just one entity that bought 40 units, they displaced how many of those workers that would walk to work? Now where do they live? They all had to find rent on the west side. Yeah, we have a housing shortage, don't we? Oh, you took 25,000 units off the market. And then you're talking, those are the apartments. And they're the ones that say, oh, well, that's in Waikiki. It's okay. No, you had all these hospitality workers, whether it was restaurants or hotels, they used to walk to work. Now they have to live on the west side. And they have to get a car. They have to drive. They have to find parking. And they have to leave an hour before. It could take an hour to get home for three or four hours like the other day when each one got shut down. That's a very important point, Sherry. All right. And this is where Local 5, I want to ask Local 5, let me help you. I want to ask your employees who've been displaced by these vacation rentals. You know, oh, it's in a resort area, we can allow it. No. And you know, they have this thing Airbnb. Oh, Auntie Sue's renting out her other room. That's not what's happening. You have these speculators, these investors that buy in whole houses were really disrupted, the market is, when they went into, when nobody could afford to buy anything in Kailu or anymore, and they started going into Waimanalo, Hali Eva, Eva, even, they're even going into Kaimuki, taking over the units. I had one of my friends come to visit. They went to the Airbnb. You know what they told them? Leave out the back door. If any neighbors just say you're my friend. I'm like, what the hell? He felt like he thought he was doing a drug deal. And this is what really has happened. And nobody did anything about it. Very interesting. Very interesting. And you know, when they charged this big money, you know, you had these investors, when we did one study on the disruption of Airbnb, last year we did the study. When we asked the, you know, some of the folks, the residents, they said that, one of them, he said, I only invested because the real estate told me. He said to me, I'll get, you only get, you don't even get 1% on your money in the bank. And I can guarantee you 20%. And you don't have to do a thing. Airbnb posted, Airbnb collects the money. We can actually even have Airbnb will send somebody in to clean it. You know, and I've stated Airbnb is in many places, just a year ago or two right before COVID. I was in Vietnam in Da Nang, and I rented a place. I got there. They had a little combination lock. They told me to combo. I got the key. I stayed there a week. I had my niece and my wife with me. We were on vacation there. And we left a week later, we just put the key on account. Left didn't see one person. The problem with the Airbnb's or their vacation rentals is, you don't employ anybody. A person who stays in a hotel, we have front desk. We have security. We have velvet. We have management. We have restaurants. These employ people. Tourism should be an employee for the local population. You can't outsource that. While these vacation rentals, no one's employed. Oh, we have a gardener come. Get lost. Oh, no, no, no. And you disrupt the neighborhood. You know, we have, we have strange people down the block every day renting out a different, out of the house. You know, we, you don't know who those people are. And, you know, here in Hawaii, my house, I have no air conditioning. I have no heat. I have my screen door open. You know, this is how people live here. Most houses don't have that. You don't have security guards and things like that. And now you have strangers every week in the, in the neighborhood. Number one, number two, the ones that have been revamped, they took these houses where they displaced, you know, they moved the family, probably multi-generation out, like say in Halihiba. They dumped another hundred grand into it, put the black stream TVs and put a barbecue in the backyard. And they start charging people $1,000 a day or $10,000 for the week if they have a pool. And guess what? If I'm paying $10,000 a week, I'm inviting my cousins, my friends, and we're partying. But everyone else has their windows open. They have to go to work the next day. But these guys are out at one in the morning doing cannonballs in the pool. Very disruptive. Yeah. It really is a disruptive. And nobody's looked at it from that standpoint. You know, everything. I'm glad you're covering that. We're almost out of time, Jerry. And I want to, yeah, send it via the survey. And on the survey, I just want to, one last thing I'd like to talk to you about, one last decade. And that's the travel industry management school that is now part of the Shidler Business College, which is a tremendous thing. And it's a tremendous thing that you're there too, may I say. So, you know, what you have is an industry that I would say is mature. An industry that has been doing business and improving its systems, its approaches. You know, all of the aspects of hospitality are very mature in Hawaii, all over Hawaii. And you say to yourself, this is good to bring tourists in, but it's also good to train people. And so we can export certain aspects of it. We can export the expertise. We can export the trained people. And the systems, the software, all of those things to the world. And I have a mixed reaction on that. I think that travel industry management at Shidler is very valuable because as in the past, under Walter G. wasn't it, the school has a tremendous influence and impact on tourism in Hawaii. And on other places that want to see Hawaii, it's sort of an exchange place. It's the hub of a wheel sort of thing. And I'm so happy that you're there and that you're doing what you're doing. Query, what role will Tim play going forward? And is it a good thing that we have this export product in terms of people and expertise that we send to the world? Thoughts? Yeah. Well, first of all, one of the great things here is that we're known for our little hospitality. We're world renowned. And then I've been very fortunate at times to go around the world and train. We're consulting whether I did it in Fiji or in the Middle East and throughout Asia. And we do have this. When you, it's just like any other thing. When you work with a certain level of people, everybody rises to that level or you'll be pushed down. Right? So because we were doing such a great job with service and don't forget, it's easy. You know, serve customers in Hawaii because everybody's coming here for vacations. You know, it's not like you're going to, you know, very few people come in here to lose a business deal. Right? They come in here, honeymoon. You just got to give the people what they want. And, you know, we have the most beautiful weather on earth. The most clean water, clean air. You know, that's one thing people forget that live here. We really, really take it for granted how clean the air is here because lots of part of this earth, you breathe in and you'll get a cough. You know, in most of Southeast Asia and Taiwan, people have been wearing masks way before COVID. That was because of pollution. You go to any big city in China, you're wearing a mask. Not because they didn't know COVID before COVID because of pollution. And we've got the best air in the world. And, you know, I don't really, you don't, you don't remember it until you leave. And when you come back, you're like, I come off that plane and I'm like, yeah, this is what it is. And we should be using our expertise in our service industry to, to share with the rest of the world. And we do do that. A lot of our students, you know, get trained here and they'll work for one of the big companies, Marrioturn. And then they'll, to move up, they have to move out. You know, they go a certain place. So is that a good thing? Are we losing something in the process? Well, we lose some, but then we get them back. A lot of them lose circle back. You know, there's some of them that, I just saw one when I was in Danai. We stayed at that condo that Airbnb was at four points. I go up to the food, eat at the restaurant. The kid, the manager of the restaurant is a graduate of the TIP program. And he's a Vietnamese national. His family, he was born actually in mainland. And he gets paid. Luckily, he doesn't get paid local fee, local rate. He gets paid from the other side. And yeah, he's hoping to come back one day. He's hoping to come back. But that's great. What it means is that we are, we are sending our expertise out. We are becoming a Mecca. And we have to treasure that so that in the future, we continue to do that. Unabashedly, the center of expertise on the hospitality industry, destination resort industry, and play that card. And we need to be more connected with the industry. We need to be working with them. And we do have, we do do that, but we could do more. We should be helping them. And our students, right now, there is a, with the COVID, there was a dip. But now, I think, they're looking. They're always looking for good jobs. It all looks good, Jerry. It all looks good. But you know what? I come away from this discussion thinking that I'm bristling with additional questions for you. I'm bristling with issues that I want to talk to you about. And I hope we can get you back here from time to time to examine not only what's happening, but what could happen, what should happen in tourism vis-à-vis the economy. As you called it, and I call it the same thing, the engine of our economy. Like it or not, it's the engine. It's the engine of running this. It's the heart of the economy in Hawaii right now. Can we diversify? Yes, but it's going to take a while. And what do you do with a person that's been trained to do what they do and they're really good at it? I mean, one of the reasons we get such high marks in service is because that person might be working for one of the hotels. Sheraton, even Alrigo, whatever. Some of those people, 30 years, 40 years. You know, you go to the awards banquet. HLTA has the awards banquet, Employee of the Year. You have people that 25 years, 30 years, 40 years. And one of the great things I was in this field before. You know, when I was with Ritz Colton, the great thing they had is, we are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen. That's, we're the same. But our job is to serve. And you know. The tradition goes way back. Way back to early 19th, 20th century. Yeah, and when you do this with, you know, it's an honorable job. And you're making people happy. And here in Hawaii, it's easy to make people happy. Why? They got the best weather on earth. Jerry Agrusa, a professor at TIM, the Travel Industry Management School at Schuyler and UH Manoa. So nice to talk to you, Jerry. I really enjoy this. And by the way, I understand that you were a shy child. A what? A shy child, yes. Very much so. Yeah, well, things have changed. I'm glad I was able to come out of my shell. So am I. Thank you, Jerry Agrusa. I want to thank you. Jay for inviting me. And thank you for talking about our research, this research paper. I think this is an opportune time that we just happened to get the paper out at a time when, you know, things could, we could share this with the, you know, administration of the tourism authority as well as, you know, our government. And hopefully, you know, some folks on the ground here that will realize, you know, not all tourists are bad. And I, you know, one of the folks that I was in a meeting with yesterday said that. So, you know, we have this very vocal minority of people that anti-tourism and everybody believes that everyone's anti-tourism. And I don't think so. I think that there's a lot that understand that tourism is needed for the economy, number one. And number two is we have good tourists. We do. And what we need to do is just make sure we continue to market towards those good tourists. Okay, we're out of time, Jerry. Jerry Agrusa, thank you so much. Aloha. Aloha. Thank you.