Airport bookstore will help time fly for Isle travelers
By Wade Kilohana Shirkey
Special to The Advertiser
It’s an air travel concept that will definitely fly: a bookstore at the airport. Books, after all, are the perfect traveling companions.
Come Jan. 18, Bestsellers books opens at Honolulu Airport, a precursor of a planned multimillion-dollar airport renovation next year that is expected to include a grand new entrance where the airport museum is now.
State transportation planners “understand, how integral a part of an airport a bookstore can be,” said Honolulu’s Bestsellers chain owner Brian Melzack. He said studies show that airport travelers experience high levels of anxiety caused by delays, missed or overbooked flights, check-in and carry-on dilemmas — even just finding the gate.
“That anxiety does not decrease,” he said, until you’re settled in your seat, anticipating, for most Hawai‘i travelers, a trip of at least five hours, leaving a lot of time to fill.
The study found “the introduction of a bookstore into the airport experience” helps alleviate this anxiety, and its manifestations, including “air rage.”
“If you want a fine dinner wine, you don’t buy it at Longs. They didn’t want a newspaper stand,” said Melzack. “They wanted a fine bookstore.”
Melzack said he has run one of Canada’s largest book chains and operated 15 airport bookstores in such cities as Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. “Every major Mainland airport I’m familiar with has a significant book presence,” he said, usually a major chain.
Hawai‘i, he said, is “one of the largest U.S. portals,” and the only one he knows of without a bookstore.
Hawai‘i, he said, “has a governor that loves books, a lieutenant governor who appreciates (Hawaiian) culture and a Department of Transportation that is insightful and in tune.” Its time had come.
The Bestsellers airport location will open Jan. 18, across from Burger King and Starbucks near Gate 11, offering food for thought that replaces the mindless electronic offers of the existing video arcade.
Bestsellers’ airport books also will travel. The bookstore will expand its airport presence with as many as three mobile book kiosks.
The shop will include some three-quarters Hawaiiana-related offerings, a larger percentage mix of books, videos and music than the 40 percent at Bestsellers’ downtown and Waikiki locations.
What you won’t find are newspapers and magazines. “We are a bookstore,” Melzack said.
The Advertiser’s Wade Kilohana Shirkey is kumu of Na Hoaloha O Ka Roselani No‘eau hula halau. He writes on Island life.
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