Page 5 - MidWeek Kauai - April 21, 2021

De Fries: The Man With A Tourism Plan
& Graduation
learn more, and he set his sights on understanding how hotels were developed. He took his talents to a local company that was building 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 naturally to him because he worked for a construc- tion company in the early 1970s building swimming pools.
“Islanders and Native Hawaiians kind of look at the world that way, where everything is connected,” he explains. “The cosmos is con- nected to the volcano and land and everything in between.
turn educate them on how to māla- ma us as a people, place, as an is- land society,” De Fries says. “At the same time, we need to run a vibrant economy. This reciprocity is embedded in our Hawaiian cul- ture, in our multicultural kama‘āi- na ways.”
De Fries lives by the adage that experience is often the best teach- er, and credits his family life for in- stilling in him solid values and the ability to analyze issues holistically.
His comprehensive understand- ing of the industry is unparalleled, and makes him the perfect person to lead HTA into the post-corona- virus era with a focus on regener- ative tourism. To accomplish this, he claims one must have a mālama mindset.
“I clearly understand that in tourism, we are the hosts,” he adds. “And the host carries a certain set of responsibilities.”
Hawai‘i Tourism Authority president and CEO John De Fries grew up in Waikīkī, with Queen Kapi‘olani Hotel as his backyard.
“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 connection that we love Hawai‘i, and we must nurture and protect our Hawai‘i.”
“That upbringing has served me well, and I call on that each day that I’m here at HTA.”
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 ma- jor currency.
“We mālama the visitor, but in
Added to that influence is the knowledge that he’s the first Na- tive Hawaiian to hold the organi- zation’s top leadership role, though De Fries assures he won’t be the last. It carries for him an increased sense of accountability.
“A very close Hawaiian friend of mine said to me, ‘Our children need to see you succeed,’” recalls De Fries, whose primary residence is in Kona. “When he said that, the magnitude of it really hit me.”
De Fries doesn’t have any chil- dren of his own — “I didn’t go through that paternal experience,” he says — but rather is a self-pro- claimed “world’s greatest uncle.” Instead of offspring, though, he sees his legacy live on in Hawai‘i’s generations to come and how they positively impact their communi- ties.
“Mālama becomes this reorgani- zation principle around which our work at HTA can move forward,” he concludes.
“We will care for and protect — mālama — those things that we aloha most.
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