Hawaii Tourism Not Starting Up Until Late Summer

They are lifting the quarantine requirement for inter island travel on June 16th and are working on plans for the people of New Zealand, Australia, Japan and South Korea to travel without quarantine restrictions. Hawaii was given US tax payer money of $5 billion for the whopping grand total of 652 coronavirus cases, and yet they are talking about opening up their island to foreigners before their own fellow Americans??? They are acting as if they are their own sovereign nation trying to make deals with other countries. I'm sorry, but this does not sit right with me at all.
Yes if here in Canada if provinces started opening up to other countries before allowing other Canadians from outside the province I would be pissed too.
 
They are lifting the quarantine requirement for inter island travel on June 16th and are working on plans for the people of New Zealand, Australia, Japan and South Korea to travel without quarantine restrictions. Hawaii was given US tax payer money of $5 billion for the whopping grand total of 652 coronavirus cases, and yet they are talking about opening up their island to foreigners before their own fellow Americans??? They are acting as if they are their own sovereign nation trying to make deals with other countries. I'm sorry, but this does not sit right with me at all.

I agree. And right now, I'm really glad that I don't own DVC at Aulani. We were supposed to vacation in Maui for a week this summer but rescheduled it to spring break in March. And right after doing that, we learned of the Hawaii governor's plans to make all visitors get a COVID-19 test at home a few days before arrival, along with you producing proof that you got the test and that it's negative...otherwise, you get to do Quarantini Time and not leave your hotel room or condo the entire time.

DH said, "I'd love to go to Hawaii, but if they're going to require that, it's not worth it. I don't want to go that bad. I'm not interested in being treated like a criminal when tourists from other countries get a free pass."

In my opinion, it's all about the money. They want tourists who will spend a lot of money in Hawaii while also calmly and quietly do as they're told and not complain.

The state of Hawaii is rapidly headed for economic disaster. In the meantime, the locals completely panic over news of ONE additional case. Good grief.
 


I think that the Gov of Hawaii is getting an idea that opening up Pan Pacific Travel only to only foreign countries might become an issue. If the tried that, I feel he could run afoul of Washington and those funds they desparately need might just get frozen. Hawaii desparately needs Federal Loans because their state unemployment is about to run out and they need the federal loans to cover the unemployment until after their economy restarts (which will not be until after tourism returns). He wants to use the Cares Act money to pay off half of the money they are going to need to borrow to cover unemployment. Otherwise, he feels that they will have to up to buisness tax to cover it and it would take about 10yrs to pay it off and that would really be a heavy burden on buisnesses. It was interresting that in his press conference yesterday he floated the idea that he might include some US states like Alaska and Montana in the quarantine exception as they have very low covid rates.
 
I think that the Gov of Hawaii is getting an idea that opening up Pan Pacific Travel only to only foreign countries might become an issue. If the tried that, I feel he could run afoul of Washington and those funds they desparately need might just get frozen. Hawaii desparately needs Federal Loans because their state unemployment is about to run out and they need the federal loans to cover the unemployment until after their economy restarts (which will not be until after tourism returns). He wants to use the Cares Act money to pay off half of the money they are going to need to borrow to cover unemployment. Otherwise, he feels that they will have to up to buisness tax to cover it and it would take about 10yrs to pay it off and that would really be a heavy burden on buisnesses. It was interresting that in his press conference yesterday he floated the idea that he might include some US states like Alaska and Montana in the quarantine exception as they have very low covid rates.

Being cautious regarding COVID is a good thing. Do you want to be stuck on an island with limited resources to ICU beds and ventilators!?
 


Being cautious regarding COVID is a good thing. Do you want to be stuck on an island with limited resources to ICU beds and ventilators!?
That was not my point, my point is that there are ways of being cautious that may violated existing laws and policy that could pontentially have other ramifications. You may feelike you are being cautious driving 35 MPH on a open freeway in good weather but you can still get a ticket for it.d

Interresting thought, Is openning travel to people from Montana and Alaska and not say, Washington, California or Oregon even possible? If you flew through and stopped at one of those states wouldn't you have to Quarantine? This could actually be a clever ploy, open tourism to all states except those that offer a direct flight to Hawaii and then in that tourists travelling from those states to Hawaii that pass thourgh a non-cleared state airport will have quarantine. Bingo! You give the illustion of opening tourism to the mainland while at the same time making it impossible.
 
Last edited:
Source please?

https://www.staradvertiser.com/2020...unce-lifting-of-interisland-quarantine-today/
“This is an important step to reopening our kama’aina economy,” Ige said at his daily COVID-19 briefing, adding that he would announce a target date next week on when trans-Pacific travel can resume. “We want to be mindful of the notion that other communities have reopened their economies too quickly and have seen second spikes and increasing outbreaks.”

Interisland travelers, however, will be required to undergo health screenings and temperature scans at local airports and complete additional paperwork on travel history, residence, and where they will be staying on island to make sure that “no one has traveled to out of state and visited any of the other communities where the virus has actively been circulated,” he said on the Honolulu Star-Advertiser’s COVID-19 Care Conversation. The 14-day mandatory quarantine remains for all mainland and international visitors.

On reopening trans-Pacific travel, Ige said authorities will focus on communities with low virus incidence, including New Zealand and Australia “as first candidates that we would be interested in,” and “obviously from an economic perspective, Japan and South Korea.”
 
https://www.staradvertiser.com/2020...unce-lifting-of-interisland-quarantine-today/
“This is an important step to reopening our kama’aina economy,” Ige said at his daily COVID-19 briefing, adding that he would announce a target date next week on when trans-Pacific travel can resume. “We want to be mindful of the notion that other communities have reopened their economies too quickly and have seen second spikes and increasing outbreaks.”

Interisland travelers, however, will be required to undergo health screenings and temperature scans at local airports and complete additional paperwork on travel history, residence, and where they will be staying on island to make sure that “no one has traveled to out of state and visited any of the other communities where the virus has actively been circulated,” he said on the Honolulu Star-Advertiser’s COVID-19 Care Conversation. The 14-day mandatory quarantine remains for all mainland and international visitors.

On reopening trans-Pacific travel, Ige said authorities will focus on communities with low virus incidence, including New Zealand and Australia “as first candidates that we would be interested in,” and “obviously from an economic perspective, Japan and South Korea.”

Can you please post the source for your comment? Thank you :)
 
They are lifting the quarantine requirement for inter island travel on June 16th and are working on plans for the people of New Zealand, Australia, Japan and South Korea to travel without quarantine restrictions. Hawaii was given US tax payer money of $5 billion for the whopping grand total of 652 coronavirus cases, and yet they are talking about opening up their island to foreigners before their own fellow Americans??? They are acting as if they are their own sovereign nation trying to make deals with other countries. I'm sorry, but this does not sit right with me at all.

Where is this info coming from?
 
This money was from the CARES Act. This statement is misleading.

Nope I meant what I said. CARES act will have to be paid back by every tax payer so it counts. That money was meant to help people through these rough times, not for the state to milk it for all it's worth before it finally runs out and then decide to do something about their economy.
 
Can you please post the source for your comment? Thank you :)
The comment about possibly including low covid case states like Alaska or Montana from the mandatory quarantine came from either his press conference about interstate travel or an earlier conference that I also listened to. He made the comment that they may allow low covid case states also to bypass the quarantine like Alaska and Montana in context with him taking about Japan, Australia, New Zealand and S. Korea. He qualified that statement with the comment saying that he granted that those were not major markets of Hawaiian tourism but that unfortunately major mainland markets like California were exibiting "concerning" spikes in covid cases.

The comment about using Cares funds to cover half the loans needed to continue to fund unemployment came from one of the same conferences. He was asked if there was a concern about Hawaii running out of unemployment money. His response was what I outlined about with the added dig that he was displeased the legislature had tied up the Cares funds in the State's "Rainy Day Fund" that requires a legislative vote to allocate funds from.
 
I think that the Gov of Hawaii is getting an idea that opening up Pan Pacific Travel only to only foreign countries might become an issue. If the tried that, I feel he could run afoul of Washington and those funds they desparately need might just get frozen. Hawaii desparately needs Federal Loans because their state unemployment is about to run out and they need the federal loans to cover the unemployment until after their economy restarts (which will not be until after tourism returns). He wants to use the Cares Act money to pay off half of the money they are going to need to borrow to cover unemployment. Otherwise, he feels that they will have to up to buisness tax to cover it and it would take about 10yrs to pay it off and that would really be a heavy burden on buisnesses. It was interresting that in his press conference yesterday he floated the idea that he might include some US states like Alaska and Montana in the quarantine exception as they have very low covid rates.

Alaska and Montana do not even have direct flights to Hawaii. His ideas make no sense.
 
Last edited:
Alaska and Montana do not even have direct flights to Hawaii. His ideas make no sense.

I agree. I think that the Hawaii governor is using the MSU method...he's Making Stuff Up as he goes along. According to 2019 statistics here, there were about twice as many visitors to Hawaii from the western US (4.6M) compared to eastern US (2.2M), with Japan making up 1.5M visitors and Canada about 0.5M.

Alaska has a total population of about 731,000 people as of 2019.
Montana? 1.019 million.

I'm sorry, but Alaska and Montana tourists to Hawaii aren't going to dig Hawaii out of its hole.

This website shows the breakdown for 2019 and how many visitors from each US state went to Hawaii. In ALL of 2019, Alaska visitors to Hawaii made up 2.56% of the total for the pacific region states. And Montana? 0.88% of mountain region states.

Hawaii needs to open up interstate travel and release quarantine restrictions for Pacific region and mountain region states because those 2 regions comprise 67.6% of total US visitors to Hawaii in 2019. Alaska and Montana aren't going to save them.

Economists are already predicting a large exodus of residents out of the state to the mainland as people look for work. Click here for an article in today's newspaper on the subject. Yet at the same time, the same Honolulu newspaper publishes articles all the time making it sound like the world is coming to an end because ONE additional case was reported. ONE person out of 1.416 million people. Somehow in Hawaii, the goal went from "flatten the curve" to "prevent ANYONE from getting it at all." Then you throw in the emotional "YOU'RE GOING TO KILL GRANDMA!" argument, and then that pretty much shuts down all discussion on the matter.

It's nuts.
 
Last time i checked there was a direct flight from Alaska. Maybe post covid though its gone?
 
I wasn't exactly kidding. Yes, those are economic facts. One fact that is not in there is that though Japanese and South Korean tourists, on the average, spend way more than the average US tourist. Hense it makes sense economically to open up tourism to those 2 countries so you can get more $$ per tourist and those countries have Covid pretty will under control. As foreign nations, Hawaii can impose terms and limitations that they cannot do as easy with mainalnd US tourists. Were Hawaii a soverign nation this would be a no brainer.

However, they are not. Since they are part of the United States, openning tourism to foreign countries and not to their fellow country men is not going to sit well with a number of people and as I conjectured, could open them up to Federal Scrutiny. The last thing they want is a Federal judge striking down the whole quarantine completely. The solution could be to give the illusion of opening Hawaii up to select mainland states while at the same time limitting them from actually travelling to Hawaii by not allowing any states with direct flights. It gets tourism going with their favored tourists, keeps the mainland cut off and at least buys them time until someone starts questioning why mainlanders can't actually get to Hawaii. They appear to be playing for time. They need tourist money desparately but don't want to get flooded with tourists until the pandemic on the mainland is better under control. Even if there is a direct flight from Hawaii, the strick restrictions imposed upon people travelling there combined with the low rate of covid infection Hawaii works in their favor.
 
Source please?

https://www.civilbeat.org/2020/06/i...ral-aid-will-soon-run-out-for-many-in-hawaii/
Last time i checked there was a direct flight from Alaska. Maybe post covid though its gone?

Yes, there were direct flights on Alaska Airlines but I don’t think that route is currently in service.



Regarding the Pacific travel bubble, lawmakers aren’t talking about creating a free-for-all environment. The plan is to make it easy for some international visitors to receive exemptions from the 14 day quarantine for people willing to provide some sort of medical clearance. I could be wrong but I don’t think HIPAA/privacy laws would apply to international travelers.
 

GET A DISNEY VACATION QUOTE

Dreams Unlimited Travel is committed to providing you with the very best vacation planning experience possible. Our Vacation Planners are experts and will share their honest advice to help you have a magical vacation.

Let us help you with your next Disney Vacation!





Top