Should travellers return to Maui following the catastrophic wildfires? Yes.

Your STAY Magazine correspondent caught up with Kalani Ka’ana’ana, the authority’s chief brand officer, for an exclusive update on Maui tourism as he was boarding a plane earlier this week.

There have been suggestions in some quarters that it’s too early to return to the island, which saw the town of Lahaina burned to cinders earlier this month. At least 115 people are confirmed dead, and the missing persons count could be as high as 1,100.

“I know it’s a sensitive topic, but I spent the last our days on the island,” Ka’ana’ana said in a telephone interview. “First and foremost, if you’re unable to travel to Maui at this time consider donating to the Hawai’i Community Foundation’s Maui Strong Fund. There’s also a campaign being organized by the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement called Kako’o (Support) Maui.”

“I think another (way to help) is really responsible, compassionate visitation right now. The rest of Maui (outside of Lahaina and the West Maui tourism spots from Ka’anapali north to Kahana, Napili and Kapalua) is completely safe. It’s open and eager to host guests again.

“We’ve seen visitors heed the call (to stay away) in the earliest days of the emergency,” he said. “The problem is that our visitors have heeded that call, but now it’s having an economic impact on the rest of the island.”

Ka’ana’ana said he spoke with rental car agency owners who reported that business is down 75 per cent.

Forbes reports that the number of flight passenger arrivals on Maui has been reduced from an average of 7,000 per day to approximately 2,000.

That’s a huge loss on an island where roughly 70 to 80 per cent of the GDP comes from tourism.

We’ve already heard about layoffs because people aren’t travelling to other parts of the island, like Wailuku, Hana, Wailea and Makena,’ Ka’ana’ana said. “Respectful and compassionate and empathetic travel to other parts of Maui outside of Lahaina and Kaanapali and all that is exactly what we need right now.”

A high school friend of mine works at one of the largest resorts in Ka’anapali and offered some thoughts of her own.

“Tourists should come stay in South side/Wailea and please not complain how they had to change their vacation,” she told me in a Facebook message. “Over 1000 adults and children have not been found and identified. Please, Jim, we appreciate tourists, it is just a very excruciating painful time and having tourists not listen not to come over to the Westside go past police barriers to take pictures of the destruction has really made us locals very mad.

“Many of us will be losing our jobs soon, many will move off the island because (there will be) no jobs. This is a very stressful time.

“Write tourists to be respectful to our island limitations and tragedy.”

Not everyone on the island is happy about visitors swimming in an ocean where people died trying to escape the fire. But Ka’ana’ana suggested they’re a minority.

“There will always be a handful of people who say that. And they’re some of the loudest. They got to (actor) Jason Mamoa in the early days. And he echoed that call (to stay away) in the early days. But I think that many, many residents I’ve spoken to, including community leaders in Lahaina, recognize that delicate balance and are now starting to say they welcome respectful compassionate visitation to other parts of the island if we give the Lahaina community and West Maui time to grieve and bury their loved ones and find a new place to live.

“They understand that families in other parts of the island need to work.”