Kealana: film shoots provided crucial local business revenue during COVID

Kealana noted that while tourism shut down during COVID, film productions provided steady work for many local businesses. “We were the only ones. There was no tourists,” he said, pointing to hotels, equipment rentals and set suppliers who benefited from production activity at a time when other sectors were idle.

He walked through examples — base camps, rentals, catering and COVID teams hired for sets — to show how a single production’s spending ripples through the local economy. Kealana used the example to argue that keeping productions on-island supports broader economic resilience and that incentive design should account for these spillovers.