Does the visitor industry do enough to prevent drownings on Kaua‘i?

With our heartrending start to 2013, this is a question that I am frequently asked. The visitor industry is all about attracting and welcoming people to visit our legendary destination.

Does it do a good enough job of keeping our invited guests safe while they’re here?

Does it inform them of risks they take when they visit our beaches here?

Every survey ever done shows that if you ask a visitor, as they get off the plane, “What is the first thing you want to do here after you’ve checked into your room?”, the overwhelming No. 1 answer is “go to the beach!”

We are all reeling from what’s happened this year: Nine people have drowned on Kaua‘i. Seven of the nine victims were visitors.

Before we get to any answers, we first have to ask: What exactly is the visitor industry? I’m not sure I’m the best person to provide an answer, but it has many components.  If the definition is any business that benefits from having visitors on Kaua‘i, then I’m hard pressed to think of any Kaua‘i business — including the hospital that I work in — that isn’t a part of this industry.

So the question really becomes: Do we all do enough to prevent drownings ?

I will, somewhat arbitrarily, try to narrow my definition a bit, namely to the places where people stay when they come here, the businesses which book their trip and the for-pay activities they do once they are here.

So now we’re talking about resorts, hotels, time-shares and vacation rentals. Then we have car rentals, tour bus companies, zip line businesses, Na Pali cruises, helicopter businesses, kayak businesses, activity desk businesses, guide books.

We could obviously add in airlines and cruise ships, as well as the Kaua‘i Visitors Bureau, the Kaua‘i Visitor Information Channel (KVIC-TV). Hey, I better stop, or this whole article will just be the Kaua‘i Yellow Pages!

Let me now start answering the question: First, as someone who is in the thick of ocean safety efforts, I can tell you that the visitor industry does a whole lot.  

Commitment includes not only financial support of KLA and our programs, but also eager support of Pat Durkin’s WAVE program — its goal is to provide visitor industry personnel with the information that they need to be passing onto our visitors, all day every day, one visitor at a time. It includes calling us to supply ocean safety brochures for every room. It includes allowing us to put up our beach safety displays on beachfronts.

I do need to specifically talk about our Kaua‘i Visitors Bureau, which in some ways is the coordinator and the centerpiece of Kauai’s self-marketing efforts.

KVB has its own brochure with important information. It helps us distribute the county’s ocean safety brochure to racks everywhere.

It links to the Kaua‘i Explorer website. It helps us set up meetings with visitor industry players about ocean safety. It attends and sponsors meetings that are about this issue.

Resort hotels?  One resort has donated more than $30,000 to KLA’s programs and is an avid recipient of the WAVE program. Most resort hotels have enthusiastically accepted Pat Durkin’s WAVE presentation and our brochures for distribution.

 The Hawai‘i Lodging and Tourist Association is another centerpiece of our self-promotion. It has donated a very significant amount of money toward our KLA programs. And it has also helped us coordinate distribution of the county ocean safety brochures to many hotels.     

Time share/condo businesses? Some are very diligent about asking us for brochures and giving them to its clients. Some are not.

Vacation rental businesses? There is one that has been supporting our ocean safety efforts, and other companies are catching on. But a nut we still have no idea how to crack is the one-person vacation rentals, where the owner maybe lives in the house part of the year and rents it out when they are away.

Car rentals? They give out a Kaua‘i Drive guide to every renter, and in there is an important ocean safety page and also started giving out county ocean safety brochures to every car renter.

Airlines? Another nut we have yet to crack, and it merits a whole article unto itself. The Lihu‘e Airport, however, has stepped up big time, allowing for ocean safety banners on its premises, and it is sponsoring an ocean safety video that will very soon be airing on four 55-inch monitors in the baggage claim areas.

Tour boat companies? Two in particular stand out in their commitment with its donations to KLA’s programs and with sponsoring www.kauaiexplorer.com. And I have witnessed one-on-one ocean safety information given to clients.

Guide books? Again, these can’t be lumped together. Some are very serious in their commitment to recommend only safe areas. Some are not. And this issue is as difficult to figure out as is our ocean itself. Some areas can be safe as can be on one given day, and a death trap the next day (or hour). So do you leave the area out of your guide book? Or do you mention it and say “never go there?” Or do you mention it and say “go there only when it’s safe, and see if you can figure that out?”  

These are examples of what the visitor industry is doing. Can the industry do more? The answer is yes. But having answered this question with a yes, I (as a hospital employee and therefore a beneficiary of our visitors) immediately have to ask the question: Can I do more? Can KLA do more?

The answer again is yes. We have put ourselves in the position such that the visitor industry looks to us for guidance as to what exactly they can do and should do, above and beyond donating money to our programs. If they have failed to do enough, it is partly because we have failed to guide them and encourage them (and, yes, prod them).

I have often mentioned the Mauna Kea Resort on the Big Island as the gold standard for what resorts can do to protect our visitors (including having lifeguards on its beach), and it’s time to look towards them again. As I write these words we are engaged in emergency county and visitor industry meetings.

Can the county, state and individuals do more? Yes, of course.

We are doing a lot, we really are. We have to try and believe in ourselves even in our difficult, tragic — and for me, humiliating — times. Yes, we can do more. As they say in sports training: It isn’t always how hard you work, it’s how smart you work. KLA will try and help us all figure out how to do both.

At this point I feel like we need God’s help, as well as all the effort that us humans can put together.

• Dr. Monty Downs is president of the Kaua‘i Lifeguard Association and an emergency room doctor at Wilcox Memorial Hospital.