New restriction on international travelers could slow down recovery of Hawaii tourism – Honolulu, Hawaii news, sports & weather
According to the Hawaii Tourism Authority, there are about 50 direct flights between Japan and Hawaii per month with about 60 trusted testing partners in Japan — infrastructure tourism officials say took months to establish.
“We were pretty much ahead of the country, the rest of the country for this kind of restriction,” said Eric Takahata, managing director, Hawaii Tourism Japan. “In that sense, it won’t affect the Japanese market that much, because they were used to doing this from last November.”
“Inbound travelers to Hawai’i were already required to provide negative test results prior to departure, and this will remain the standard for the foreseeable future. Due to the fact that the CDC’s new pre-arrival testing program exactly mirrors the Safe Travels program, it is unlikely that this will affect travel to Hawai’i in any measurable way,” said Mufi Hannemann, Hawaii Lodging & Tourism Association President & CEO. “The fact that the CDC is insisting on testing prior to travel really highlights the fact that pre-arrival testing is an effective tool to mitigate risk of travel-related cases of COVID-19 from trans-Pac or interisland travelers.
