Recovery for travel, Hawaii’s economic engine, is nowhere in sight. In fact, the totality of our decimated state economy hasn’t even begun to be fully realized.
Although the holidays are normally the busiest time of year in the islands, we hear that hotel occupancy (other than on shuttered Kauai) at the moment is running less than 25%. It would otherwise be sold out at premium dollar. Last month’s latest data available indicated travel was down by nearly 80% (Hawaii Tourism Authority).
Issues preventing the return of Hawaii travel include explosive mainland COVID cases and concomitant recommendations for no travel, fear associated with travel during COVID, financial hardship among Hawaii travelers, and last but not least, negative PR associated with Hawaii.
2021 Hawaii Travel Recovery | 5 Essential Drivers
1. Massive new public relations and marketing campaigns welcoming back tourists.
You have been vociferous in stating how you as visitors feel, especially that you don’t feel welcome in the same way you were before. Many have questioned Hawaii’s aloha.
BOH: There is much work to bring back that Aloha spirit and to educate visitors on cultural matters. The Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau (HVCB) says it is releasing a new website design (for at least one of its two websites) and has hired a new CEO, John De Fries. The site says, “Our site is under construction. Please excuse any incomplete or out of date information as we finalize the redesign of our site.” The Board Chair of HVCB is hotelier Jerry Gibson, a long-time Hawaii hospitality professional and a friend we’ve both known since he was General Manager of the Grand Hyatt Kauai.
In the past, Hawaii excelled through its natural beauty, glorious weather, and community spirit. It’s more than obvious that these just aren’t going to suffice any longer on their own. An ambitious and well thought out plan will need to be hatched and implemented. These do exist. See Ireland’s award-winning marketing campaign. It is a country that gets about the same number of annual visitors as does Hawaii.
2. COVID vaccine travel plan. When vaccinations start to be more widespread, we’re all hopeful that the sense that we can resume travel safely again will return. But in any event, this will take some time, perhaps at least six months, for there to be any real impact.
BOH: We do expect to hear from the governor imminently regarding Hawaii travel rules for vaccinated travelers. Our understanding is that there will be no further testing requirements and that this may commence as soon as February.
3. Change pre-travel testing rules from 72 to 96 hours. The current requirement is for testing to be within 72 hours of the mainland to Hawaii departure. There has been widespread suggestion and speculation that it will be changed to be within 96 hours of departure.
BOH: The governor said, however, he was averse to any more rule changes, at least right now, for many reasons, including not sowing more confusion. This will be addressed, however, one way or another, soon after the new year. Look for something as soon as next week.
4. Eliminate 10-day mandatory quarantine when visitor complies with all rules. This is for those times when, through no fault of a visitor, results from Hawaii trusted testing partners do not arrive in time for Hawaii arrival.
BOH: This too been recommended by many stakeholders and visitors and makes good sense practically and politically. Providing another test on arrival for those passengers (if not all passengers) is also widely suggested, and Honolulu Airport now has that testing capability at its fingertips. The governor last said, however, that he wasn’t inclined to make this change.
5. Statewide symmetry on travel rules.
Currently, there is a huge disparity in regulations for Hawaii travel. The Big Island performs on-arrival tests on some of its arriving visitors. The other islands do not. And Kauai alone has a 10-day mandatory quarantine without regard to pre-travel testing. Kauai has requested a change to a 3-night quarantine bubble, with a second test on the 4th day, which the governor has not approved. In the interim, there is virtually no travel to Kauai.
BOH: Visitors to any one island cannot be expected to understand and adhere to changing rules that vary island-by-island. Let alone visitors who travel to multiple islands, which is not uncommon. The governor has stated his concern about all this confusion as well.
What do you think is needed?
Aloha guys. I want to remind you how essential Beat of Hawai’i is to everyone wondering what this New Year 2021 holds for travelers to the Aloha State.
To say that the lack of Aloha, government incompetence, and COVID-19 has dealt all but a death blow to tourism is an understatement.
That being said, and the fact that I know you guys have a crystal ball, what are your predictions for upcoming travel to our beautiful State?
Are all previous patterns out the window?
Having Ohana that want to come over, and looking at the airfare on Hawai’ian Airline’s website, it looks like they’re clueless. $2400 for first class tickets every day of the week?
Mahalo ahead of time for your input.
Stay safe and blessings always 🌺
Hi Pam.
Thanks! Can you give us the city pairs and dates so we can have a closer look please for your ohana. We will update soon about 2021 travel planning. It has just been too complicated to know what is coming next.
Aloha.
Thanks for all the info you provide, it was essential to the successful completion of our recent trip. We would have been flying in the dark without it–I don’t see anyone else providing this service, so thank you! Since you did highlight some of my pre-trip concerns in a prior post, I thought I should post a quick recap of our 12-day trip to the Big Island from which we just returned yesterday.
– Upshot: Great trip. Our family of 5 all had a great time.
– Everyone was super nice to us. We experienced no ill will due to our presence. We stayed in a Waikoloa condo unit but traveled extensively all over the island. Not one bad experience over 12 days and dozens of activities.
– Biggest handicap: limited options on going out to eat. Can get tricky to feed a family of 5 with 3 hungry teenagers when you have to hunt down an open restaurant with outdoor seating (the last was my requirement)–but we managed.
– I’d like to think that we took this trip in a responsible manner. I don’t know that we were ever indoors with anyone else other than me in a grocery store. Always masked up when we should have. The biggest risk is likely flying in. I realize if we had gotten sick on the flight in that could have resulted in burden for local health system–that’s where I feel guilty.
– With regards to flying in, I still felt like we were taking alot of risk of being quarantined, potentially through no fault of our own. The biggest concern I had is that Vault doesn’t time stamp tests, so I couldn’t prove the 72 hours, though we had been tested within 72. I was told by Vault it was not an issue, but that was a risk. In the end, it was fine, but the state should clarify.
– I think it’s worth clarifying because we had a great experience with Vault. Results in less than 24 hours. We did do a walk in test at our local airport, so that may have helped. 72 hours I thought was tight, but now I actually thing it should be workable.
We look forward to returning again.
One last item–no one explains when to expect results from your entry rapid test. The staff at the airport were very vague. I assume if we got any positive tests they would call us, but it was a concern for 2-3 days. Never knew if a call was going to come out of the blue that would land us all suddenly in quarantine.
We could rent our car at the airport without it, but then we we tried to check in at our condo at first the person at the front desk said we couldn’t check in until we got the results of the entry tests back! That was a shock!
She said that all the condo owners were really being careful because they could be fined tens of thousands of dollars, just like restaurants, for a single violation. I pressed a little and then she let us check in, but that was concerning. I think the state needs to clarify the rules for people.
Given that I never got any notice of the results from my entry test, I don’t know how I would ever have been able to prove what she was asking, so I assume she was misinformed.
Hi Paul.
Thanks! We appreciate the report on your recent Big Island vacation. Happy to hear everything went well.
Aloha.
Sadly, we just cancelled our March trip – just too difficult and don’t trust the the constant changes. I personally know 4 other families who have cancelled their trips as well. I understand it was too “hopeful” to travel and the local’s need to keep safe. But unfortunately we won’t return, after 2 decades of annual trips. We’ll try Florida or other more welcoming places. I do hope Hawaii recovers to the level of tourism they want to be at.
I have owned a condo in Maui for several years and have heard all the talk about visitors “trashing” the island. While driving through Lahania all one needs to do is look to the side of the road to see all the trash, discarded shopping carts, homeless tents, and abandoned cars etc. these are not tourists doing this. I have witnessed many local drunks on the beaches leaving their trash behind. There are many homeless and drug addicts walking on Front street which makes my grandkids very nervous because of their erratic behaviour.I truly believe that, for the most part, visitors are very respectful of islands and get a bad rap from the locals. Why would someone want to visit a destination that blames them for something they are innocent of. I throughly enjoy Maui but am frustrated at being blamed for something the locals are doing.
I agree even though I haven’t been there in 10 years I and my family are always respectful to other places and with the vaccines not everyone will have it until the fal here state side mahal
We found this same thing to be true on Kauau, abandoned vehicles at beaches, homeless encampments, trash. We are respectful of everything there. What we take in, we pack out. As I understand it, California pays to ship homeless people there for Hawaii’s free medical care and their welfare. Nice warm place to live.
Responding to your numbered bullet points:
1) I don’t think any new / different / “massive” PR or marketing campaign is necessary for Hawaii. It is what it is. Everyone pretty much knows what it is. The hundreds of thousands of people who were burned by the state this year (and in many cases, their airline) aren’t going to be swayed by “marketing”. We can just write them off for the time being–and that’s OK. There are billions of people in the world–hundreds of millions of potential visitors to Hawaii… we don’t need all of them… just +/- 25,000/day. Hawaii has a strong enough intrinsic appeal–and the airlines will be running specials and special adverts–along with the hotels and resorts and rental car companies–etc–to fill their empty seats as quickly as possible. The state itself doesn’t really need to concern itself with that in the short term. It has bigger fish to fry–like getting it’s together so that tourist that want to come can come. That has been and still is–and will be for the foreseeable future–the biggest problem Hawaii has: its own elected officials.
2) Obviously, common sense would dictate that anyone who has been vaccinated should be able to travel freely to and from Hawaii immediately and without restriction. But, unfortunately, there’s simply zero common sense anywhere in the state of Hawaii–particularly at the executive / legislative / bureaucratic level. So, I predict that same complete and utter ineptitude dealing with vaccinated travelers as we’ve seen with pre-tested travelers. It took more than six months for the morons running this state to come up with some kind of rudimentary framework for “safe travel”. I’m sure it will take them another six months to figure out the vaccine thing.
3) Not gonna happen. It took over six months and Herculean effort to get any sort of travel testing system in place… and many more changes after that–always restricting travel further–not less. The small but vocal “local”
I just want to give BOH a huge thank you shout out!!! We made to Maui today from NorCal. Your blogs were so helpful in getting us thru the testing process & perserving with our travel plans. We got lucky that the Sacramento Airport started a Covid-19 testing partnership on site with CityHealth on 12/16. Appts went fast but we went and asked to do a ‘standby appt’ which they allowed. Worh the 2hr wait. We also did tests thru Kaiser as a back up. Everything came back quickly & our long-planned trip to see the whale migration finally a reality. Mahalo!!
Hi Suzanna.
Thank you! Enjoy your time on Maui and thanks for letting us know how it went.
Aloha.