Vieira said the state also could build more flexibility into its tourism entry requirements, especially given Hawaii’s low level of travel-related COVID-19 cases. Intrastate travelers to the three neighbor island counties currently are subject to the same testing rules as out-of-state arrivals. Vieira said Hawaii can’t control what’s happening on the mainland, but it could help support local tourism by making it easier for kamaaina travelers to visit other islands. “It might hurt short-term bookings, but it would help long-term bookings, and that’s a trade I’d gladly make,” he said.
Keith Vieira, principal of KV & Associates, Hospitality Consulting, said there’s a lot of hope around a vaccine. While bookings had started to pick up for March, Richards said the promise of a vaccine coming in short order could cause some travelers to put first- and possibly second-quarter bookings on hold. “January and February bookings to Hawaii are very low, the lowest that I’ve seen in years,” Richards said. Richards said that even before the CDC warning, bookings to Hawaii this week were already slowing as a result of the COVID-19 surge on the U.S. We are expecting cancellations for travel to Hawaii for Thanksgiving and for the Christmas and the New Year’s holiday period.” “American people will extrapolate from the CDC announcement that they don’t want anyone traveling for 2020. “The CDC warning will hurt travel to Hawaii for the remainder of 2020,” said Jack Richards, Pleasant Holidays president and CEO. The registered trip count includes all future arrivals, not just visitors. Statewide hotel occupancy was actually worse in October, when the pre-arrival testing program started, than in September, according to the latest hotel report from STR.ĭata from Safe Travels Hawaii shows that arrivals coming for pleasure or vacation picked up steadily starting Tuesday, when 3,672 visitors were counted, through Saturday, when there were 8,322 pleasure or vacation arrivals.īut the Safe Travels website shows a steady drop-off in registered trips from 17,624 on Nov.
And some Hawaii residents are unhappy the visitor industry is trying to recover. Visitors say the destination isn’t back to its pre-pandemic level of activities and services, when the islands saw a record 10.4 million visitors in 2019. Worse yet, the state’s latest visitor satisfaction and resident sentiment surveys show both groups have grown less satisfied with Hawaii tourism. Starting Tuesday, under the new policy, trans-Pacific passengers to Hawaii who can’t present an approved negative pre-departure test upon arrival won’t be able to bypass the 14-day quarantine, even after their test results become available.Īdd to that stricter lockdowns in key western states, the top tourist market for Hawaii, and elsewhere. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to avoid Thanksgiving travel. David Ige’s announcement Thursday that Hawaii will tighten its entry requirements came at a time when travel demand already was expected to plummet due to a warning from the U.S. Even the prospect of COVID-19 immunizations starting as soon as next month is likely to cause an immediate drop in travel demand as visitors may decide to wait until the vaccine is available, industry officials say. Nobody’s got a crystal ball, but the visitor industry’s short-term future dramatically dimmed under a convergence of factors that materialized last week. The robust holiday season that Hawaii’s visitor industry anticipated is evaporating, pushing the start of a meaningful tourism recovery into the third quarter of next year.
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