Tourists Were Told to Avoid Maui. Many Workers Want Them Back.

In the first few days after an inferno leveled the Hawaiian town of Lahaina, the directive to tourists was emphatic: Stay away. And tourists, with a few exceptions, complied.

As it turns out, maybe too well.

Nearly a month after the fire, Maui, a tourism-dependent island with a hotel room for every seven and a half households, is hosting fewer visitors than at any point since the coronavirus pandemic. Pristine beaches sit empty, even those that are many miles from Lahaina. Hundreds of unused rental cars are parked in fields near the island’s main airport in Kahului, where planes arrive half full. Beds are made and pillows are fluffed in hotel rooms where no one has laid a head in weeks.