Feb
18
Numbers don't lie
By
When asked about the impact of civil unions on tourism, [“The Big Picture,” 2/10] Governor Lingle’s tourism liaison, Marsha Wienert, dismissed a domestic demographic that spends more than $60 billion annually on travel, as a “distraction.”
No wonder Hawaii has lost tens of millions of dollars from gay and lesbian visitors during the past eight years. While Wienert has access to one of the most extensive tourism data libraries in the world–from years of surveying visitors on every arriving flight to the Islands–she claims she doesn’t “know how to quantify” the additional income that would grow the honeymoon/romance market in Hawaii if couples were treated equally.
Eduardo Hernandez
Los Angeles
