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Now, the - - - hotel has been something that has been in our development plans for some time now.
<br /> First, I think Janice alluded to some of the concerns about it, and I certainly understand that. First
<br /> off, the hotel will serve business travelers and transit passengers that we're starting to really see an
<br /> increase in it, as the schedules peaked before the pandemic. We certainly have overnight flight
<br /> crews. We do, almost all the carriers, all six of them that are at the airport, overnight flight crews.
<br /> And those crews are traveling right now the distance between eight miles to Kailua town and up to
<br /> 20 miles to Waikoloa to be housed and then get back to the airport.
<br /> You know, Director Yee used in his presentation the word, "stranded." That, that I - - -because
<br /> when people are stranded in Kona Airport, I mean I have a vision of people being left over when we
<br /> had - - - in March of 2018, we had a lightning-strike storm here in Kona, and being in open-air
<br /> environment, it's, we have no protection. Yet, there were no hotel rooms available for—and we've
<br /> met numerous times with hotel association and others to establish, you know, accommodations
<br /> during that kind of period, and it's almost as if nothing short of an emergency declared by our mayor
<br /> would get them to offer, you know, ball rooms and the like in the absence of hotel rooms. A lot of
<br /> times that we call, or the airlines have made arrangements to try and get hotel rooms, there were
<br /> none. And so I- - -to the people—in fact, one night, I remember we had 464 people hold up in our
<br /> airport in rain, in lightning, because there were no hotel rooms to get them to. Now, you might say
<br /> that, you know, hey, you know, what about your airport? And it's true, you know, we really do need
<br /> to get to the next development of, terminal development, which could allow us more enclosed
<br /> facilities, but until that happens, hotels become imperative in a stranded situation. You know, hotel
<br /> is nearly universal in almost all airports in the United States of our size, and even, even some
<br /> smaller, universal around the world. I, I, one of my favorite airport hotels is one in New Zealand up,
<br /> when I get off the airplane and go to the baggage claim, I just continue to walk off to the - - - hotel,
<br /> and stay overnight until I get my ride down to Tauranga or the south areas in the next morning. So
<br /> it's a convenience, and it's something that our travelers and others look forward to.
<br /> The other thing is businesses that come you know, there is a concern over our strong reliance on
<br /> tourism, but when businesses start to grow again, I mean, the airport is essential to accommodate
<br /> those business travelers that need to get and establish new business, whether it's a return to
<br /> agriculture or other business practices, you know, the hotel is going to factor in.
<br /> And we are not in direct competition with the resort; it's not our intention to build a resort-type hotel
<br /> here. We are talking about overnight accommodations of the kind that you would normally see at
<br /> any, any airport in the United States.
<br /> So, you know, a few weeks ago we met with the DLNR, you know; we were concerned about
<br /> coastal accidents that had been happening, you know, and trying to see if we can limit that even
<br /> further without, without, you know, encroaching on an existing shoreline access road. And so we
<br /> are partnering with the DLNR to look at that. We were concerned that our coastline is home to
<br /> what's been, you know, we work closely with the Marine Mammal Center, we just had a shipment,
<br /> in fact, a few weeks ago of monk seals, you know. Nothing pleases me more as a native Hawaiian to
<br /> see the return of the monk seal to what would be like ancestral home waters here. So, of course, and
<br /> having spent night along the fishtrap at`Ai`opio and hiking from what was then Honok6hau to the
<br /> airport at Kaloko and `O`oma and beyond, I mean, I'm quite familiar with the coastline, and we had
<br /> scouted a lot of that before there was even transportation and roadways into this area. So we're quite
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