Kona Kohala Blog

Another good ol' boy bites the dust.  After years of successfully denying access to other airlines that would attempt to get a foot hold in the interisland market here, Aloha Airllines has decided they can no longer compete with Hawaiian and upstart airline, go!, the Mesa Air carrier in Hawaii.

Aloha complains that go! created an unfair playing field, operating at a loss just to put Aloha out of business.  Sorry Aloha, but you put yourself out of business.  Your management has been poor for many many years with no foresight or planning.  You've been crippled by the demands of abusive labor unions who were so intent on lining their own pockets and those of their members, they never looked ahead to the eventual outcome of their greed.  And last, some of the worst service in the industry.

For years, Aloha has flown where they wanted to regardless of what their passengers needed.  The employees had the same callous, arrogant attitude displayed by managment which has driven customers away.  After years of abuse by both Aloha and Hawaiian, residents of the state welcomed go! airlines with open arms because they weren't Aloha or Hawaiian.

Maybe a lesson will be learned.  If not, Hawaiian will be the next arrogant good ol' boy to go.  Nature abhors a void as does business.  Wouldn't it be great if Mr. Branson or Jet Blue saw the potential here, not just for interisland but for destinations to the west like Japan, Thailand, Australia, China and the rest of the western Pacific.

You won't be missed, Aloha, at least not by those of us who want good service and the aloha spirit.  I'm excitedly looking forward to what's next.

What happens next is anyone's guess.  We're faced with a housing slowdown the magnitude of which we've not seen in a long, long time and energy prices that are putting the kaibash on travel.  This double whammy is hitting Hawaii below the belt; we rely on tourism and the desireablitly of Hawaii as a place to live for people of retirement age.

When travel becomes prohibitively expensive, people think twice about moving here since the opportunity to visit or be visited becomes less and less likely.  How far energy costs can climb and how low housing prices can go are yet to be revealed to us.  There is opportunity here, somewhere.

How far ahead can you see and plan?  Do you think this will ever change or are we headed down a long painful road to a drab and dreary future?  After too many cloudy days, one may believe cloudy days are here to stay however; I believe this too shall pass.

Nothing is forever except taxes and some STD's.  This too shall pass, IMHO.  Look for the opportunity hidden in the darkness.  For thousands of years wise men have said, this too shall pass.  There's no reason to believe that we are any different than those who came before.  There has always been opportunity in crisis and chaos.

So which are you, the nay sayer or the dreamer?  Are you planning for the end or are you looking for opportunity?  What happens next is really up to each of us.  Failure or success is our choice, what'll it be?  aloha

Is there a light at the end of the tunnel or is that a headlight on the train that's about to run us over?  More and more people are predicting a market recovery by the fourth quarter.  Even the CEO of Merril Lynch is saying it.

What will that mean to you?  Here are some questions to answer, please post them here for inclusion in this week's Aloha Friday Newsletter (which if you haven't signed up for you can do now.  Just email me at Robert@FerrariPacificRealty.com and I'll put you on the list).

1.  Has our "recession" changed how you do things?

2.  Have you held back on vacation plans due to the "recession"?

3.  Do you believe that we will begin a turn around this year?  If not, when?

4.  Are you considering buying a new home or second home this year?

5.  What have you chosen to do without in light of tight money right now?

6.  The best investment today is, a) real estate  b) stocks  c) bonds  d. precious metals.

7.  Yes or no, I'm still going to retire as planned.

Answer these and let's see where people are going with this.

With the United States "on sale" right now, Canadians and other outside our borders are finding relatively good deals here in the U.S.  It wasn't that long ago that Canadians were buying property here with an exchange rate of about 75 cents Canadian to our dollar.  That's all changed now as the Loonie is on par with the green back.

A bad thing?  Probably not in this increasingly international world we live in.  It only makes sense that in a time when multinational companies are the norm, that multinational real property ownership would be right there with it.

As long as ownership remains a two way street there's nothing wrong with it.  When they can buy here but we can't buy there, I have a problem.  In this case though, Canada is usually thought of as the far northern states or Canadians see us as the southern provinces, we as a peopel aren't that much different.  I think sometimes we make things up to diasagree about just to maintain our differences.

In any case, we're seeing more and more Canadians coming to west Hawaii to look at property.  I recently sold land to a Canadian builder who's thinking of coming over to build homes.  I have clients in condos and some with homes that they hope to occupy more fully some day.  Even as we tighten our borders, pass port to go to Canada, yeah right, the imagined borders between most Americans and Canadians are dropping.  Funny how familiarity can breed comfort as much as contempt.

I say welcome to the Canadians.  Anything to keep our housing market stimulated and healthy is good for all of us.  aloha