Leasehold Properties: A Deal or a Drain?
While most of the state’s leasehold single-family properties have converted to fee simple ownership over the past few decades, the leasehold option remains alive in the condo market.
Community & Economy
13 Great Things About Waikiki (Plus 13 Awful Things)
A Hawaii Business team of four reporters, four photographers and four interpreters (two Chinese, one Japanese and one Korean) invaded Waikiki. We asked tourists, workers and business owners what they liked and didn’t like about the tourist mecca, and here are the…
Bartering Makes a Comeback
A graduate student trades the bananas he grows to a local café for gift cards. On Craigslist, a beekeeper on Hawaii Island says he wants to swap a Langstroth beehive for a sailboat or greenhouse. Using a bartering network, a freelance…
Waikiki After Dark
Waikiki is the Honolulu Police Department’ssmallest district, but, at three square miles it is also the most densely populated, says Officer John DeMello, who has been patrolling these streets for the past 10 years. I accompanied DeMello one Friday evening and…
Waikiki Present and Future - Extended Version
Panelists: W. David P. Carey III: President and CEO, Outrigger Enterprises Group Rick Egged: President, Waikiki Improvement Association Eric Gill: Financial Secretary-Treasurer, Unite Here Local 5 Hawaii Ernest “Ernie” K. Nishizaki: Executive VP, Kyo-Ya Co. LLC George D. Szigeti: President…
HTA Tries to Smooth Out Boom-and-Bust Cycles
The Hawaii Tourism Authority understands how hard it will be, but it is trying to rewrite the old saying that insists, What goes up, must come down. There are already strong signs that the tourism boom of the past few years has…
Homelessness in Waikiki
Many of Waikiki’s Homeless Are Mainland Snowbirds Just as tourists trade the cold winters of Minneapolis, Seattle and other cities for the warmth of Waikiki, so do another group of visitors. “There are homeless people who come here in the…
International Market Place Closes
The old International Market Place is dead. For more than 50 years, tourists flocked there, drawn to the warren of cheap jewelry stores, kiosks selling kitschy bric-a-brac and the romance of the original Don the Beachcomber restaurant, which opened there…
Editor's Note: A Waikiki Love Song
When people tell me they never go to Waikiki, I wonder why they would want to miss so many wonderful things. Sure I love to play in the ocean and climb our green mountains far from the madding crowds, but,…
Boom in the Hawaii Gun Business
Imagine a retail business in which one key measure of sales growth was up 42.2 percent last year, with similar growth this year. You’d be on Easy Street, right? Except this same business is plagued by a perennial problem: Customers…
Which Ethnic Group Makes the Most Money?
If you have lived in Hawaii for a while, the ranking of the richest and poorest ethnic groups shouldn’t surprise you. The hierarchy has remained the same for the past four decades, says UH ethnic studies professor Jonathan Okamura, who…
Building Bridges to China
Chinese companies and individuals are investing tens of billions of dollars in America. Here’s how Hawaii businesses and nonprofits are creating relationships with their Chinese counterparts and working to get a share of those investments, with varying degrees of success.…
Thirty Meter Telescope could boost Hawaii Island's economy
A $1.4 billion construction project would be a big deal anywhere in the world, but for struggling Hilo and Hawaii Island’s moribund construction industry, it’s a gift from above – figuratively and literally. “It’s a huge project for us,” says…
Riding the Up-and-Down Construction Cycle
The coming construction boom will be very different from the last one: different kinds of projects, new ways of financing and maybe fewer rising costs. It’s often hard to say exactly when the business cycle turns. Some date the end…
Editor's Note: China as No. 1: True or False?
It’s inevitable that China’s economy will overtake America’s in the next 20 years, right? After all, Chinese gross domestic product grew at an average annual rate of 9.3 percent over the past five years, according to the World Bank, while…
First Hawaiian Bank and Bank of Hawaii share more differences than similarities
Profitability is the bottom line, but it’s not the end of the story. Consider banks: In 2010 and 2011, Hawaii’s two largest financial institutions, First Hawaiian Bank and Bank of Hawaii, were also the state’s most profitable companies. Last year, they ranked first…
Figs are Hawaiʻi's Most Lucrative Crop
A report by UH’s College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources compared 12 newly introduced crops in Hawaiʻi and found figs way ahead of the pack.
Balancing Hawaii's energy supply and demand
The sun and wind create clean, local energy for Hawaii, but they’re intermittent. They come and go on a schedule that doesn’t follow the Islands’ demand for…
Staging a Race is No Walk in the Park
The costs add up because even small sports events need planning, permits, cones, cops, signs, safety and much more On any given Sunday, hundreds or thousands of weekend warriors are on the roads…
Why big development is so difficult in Hawaii
For decades, "too difficult" has been the refrain in the development community. Developers believe Hawaii’s land-use laws are too complicated, environmental regulations too onerous, and deference to Native Hawaiian gathering and access…
Editor's Note: Rebuilding the Crystal Ball on Economic Forecasts
Think you have a tough job? Try being an economist. Every November, economists around the world issue their forecasts of the coming year. There is always a huge range of opinions: One American economist may suggest U.S. GDP will rise…
Preparing for Hawaii's Next Hurricane
When Iniki hit, many property owners were uninsured, under-insured or covered by a company that couldn’t handle all its claims When a massive storm like Hurricane Sandy strikes, the effects on the insurance industry are felt around the world, including…
Checking a decade of Hawaii's economic forecasts
Hawaii’s economy is hard to predict. Hawaii Business compared a decade of annual economic forecasts against the actual numbers and found most forecasts correctly predict whether key indicators will rise or fall. But the forecasts rarely get the actual numbers…
Editor's Note: Strengthen Society, 2 People at a Time
I’ll start with bad news, and then get to good news before explaining why all of it belongs in a business magazine. As Valentine’s Day approaches, the most depressing news for me does not involve violence or political deadlock, but…