Page 20 - MidWeek - April 14, 2021

20 MIDWEEK APRIL 14, 2021
De Fries: The Man With A Tourism Plan
FROM PAGE 13
understanding how hotels were developed. He took his talents to a local company that was build- ing three properties — two on Maui and one on Kaua‘i — and
was able to learn the ropes in real estate and resort development, as well as construction. The latter, De Fries adds, came more natu- rally to him because he worked
for a construction company in the early 1970s building swimming pools.
“I clearly understand that in tourism, we are the hosts,” he adds. “And the host carries a cer- tain set of responsibilities.”
De Fries lives by the adage that experience is often the best teacher, and credits his family life for instilling in him solid values and the ability to analyze issues holistically.
Added to that influence is the knowledge that he’s the first Na- tive Hawaiian to hold the orga- nization’s top leadership role, though De Fries assures he won’t be the last. It carries for him an increased sense of accountability.
“Islanders and Native Hawai- ians kind of look at the world that way, where everything is connected,” he explains. “The cosmos is connected to the vol- cano and land and everything in between.
“A very close Hawaiian friend of mine said to me, ‘Our chil- dren need to see you succeed,’ ” recalls De Fries, whose primary residence is in Kona. “When he said that, the magnitude of it re- ally hit me.”
“That upbringing has served me well, and I call on that each day that I’m here at HTA.”
De Fries doesn’t have any children of his own — “I didn’t go through that paternal experi- ence,” he says — but rather is a self-proclaimed “world’s great- est uncle.” Instead of offspring, though, he sees his legacy live on in Hawai‘i’s generations to come and how they positively impact their communities.
His comprehensive under- standing of the industry is un- paralleled, and makes him the perfect person to lead HTA into the post-coronavirus era with a focus on regenerative tourism. To accomplish this, he claims one must have a mālama mindset.
“We mālama the visitor, but in turn educate them on how to mālama us as a people, place, as an island society,” De Fries says. “At the same time, we need to run a vibrant economy. This reciprocity is embedded in our Hawaiian culture, in our multicultural kama‘āina ways.”
“Mālama becomes this reorga- nization principle around which our work at HTA can move for- ward,” he concludes.
The way De Fries sees it, the fundamentals of Hawai‘i’s tour- ism industry haven’t changed. It remains a relationship-based way of life in which trust still is the major currency.
“We will care for and protect — mālama — those things that we aloha most. We all have the capacity to love our homes, our places of birth, our families, and what regenerative tourism is based on is this visceral con- nection that we love Hawai‘i, and we must nurture and protect our Hawai‘i.”
Hawai‘i Tourism Authority president and CEO John De Fries grew up in Waikīkī, with Queen Kapi‘olani Hotel as his backyard.
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