Passport to tourism growth

Visa waivers have been heralded as a strong element in huge increases in tourism to Hawaii from Asia — but is access to nonstop flights actually as important, if not more so, as availability of visas at sites around the globe?

"For Hawaii, it’s mainly access," says Daniel Nahoopii, research director of the Hawaii Tourism Authority.

Economist Paul Brewbaker agrees that access to travel to Hawaii is paramount, that nonstop flights are "a sufficient condition for a step-up in travel growth to Hawaii."

"Visas may be a necessary condition," he observes, "but they’re not binding the way they used to be. … Everybody has computers with which to process visa applications, just for starters."

A more circumspect opinion is offered by one of Hawaii’s top airlift experts: Mark Dunkerley, president and CEO of Hawaiian Airlines, whose company has enjoyed expansion while most others have either idled or contracted in the recession. He contends that visa waivers are vital in assuring large numbers of foreigners to visit America rather than be subjected to "the very substantial hurdle and barrier" of obtaining U.S. visas.

In November 2008, Korea became a participant in the U.S. Visa Waiver Program. Koreans making the trip to Hawaii last year totaled 156,819, up 39 percent from 2011, and they are expected by HTA to reach 175,722 this year. The visa waiver did help, said Nahoopii, but the increase in visitors from Korea in recent years had more to do with the economy than its inclusion in the waiver program.

Nahoopii said HTA foresaw growth in tourism by accurately predicting tourism targets in 2010 through last year by observing Korean stocks and measuring the price of goods and services.

"Korea came back quite quickly out of the recession compared with the U.S. and Europe," he said. "We had the recession in 2008 and 2009, but you could see Australia and Korea were already pacing ahead and their fiscal situation was much stronger."

Tourists from Taiwan — which was granted visa waiver status just last November, the latest of 37 countries in the waiver program — totaled 9,641 last year. Hawaii’s tourism authority has yet to determine this year’s forecast of Taiwanese to Hawaii.

Nahoopii noted, though, that the infrastructure of the policy in Taiwan has yet to come into place. Taiwanese must obtain a new passport in order to take advantage of the visa waiver program, he said, but "Taiwan has never been a very difficult country to get a visa to come into the United States.

"The resources were adequate to process these visas in a timely manner."

The problem has been finding enough airline seats to accommodate potential Taiwanese, Nahoopii said. Taipei-based China Airlines operates seven flights a week between Taipei and Hawaii via Tokyo and is likely to add two direct flights in June. Hawaiian Airlines plans to launch a three-days-a-week service between Taipei and Honolulu next summer via a 294-seat Airbus A330-200 aircraft.

"We wouldn’t be flying to Taiwan but for the coming of the visa waiver for the citizens of Taiwan," Dunkerley said, predicting that the total amount of traffic between Taiwan and Hawaii will increase by 50 percent to 100 percent over the first few years.

Nahoopii said the air traffic available has been an important element in drawing tourists from China. "It’s having the airlines commit to having direct service," Nahoopii said, "and right now we have only one airline — Chinese Eastern — serving Shanghai (to Hawaii). It’s not a matter of demand; we know that plane is usually full."

Dunkerley said the lack of visa waiver for China continues to be the main obstruction, causing hesitation by Hawaiian Airlines to begin service there.

"The impediment of getting a U.S. tourist visa is still so high in China that, as yet, we haven’t made the commitment to commence service, but we are looking at China very seriously. We have employees and sales teams in China already, selling connecting tickets via our services out of Inchon (Korea)." However, he said, the requirement of Chinese to obtain a U.S. tourist visa "continues to be a very substantial impediment."

China is not expected to qualify for visa waivers anytime soon. The Obama administration has responded to complaints that visa processing was hindered by too few U.S. officers to handle the chore and the waiting time of as much as 48 to 64 days for in-person interviews of visa applicants.

In 2007, only 56,000 came from China to Hawaii. Chinese tourists in Hawaii numbered 115,927 last year, an improvement of 42 percent from 2011, and are expected to grow to 162,027 this year.

"They’re saying that getting visas is not an issue anymore," Nahoopii said. "Processing time is a couple of days instead of a whole month."

Still, Dunkerley says that obtaining U.S. visas is a fundamental problem.

"First of all, the rules around securing a visa are sort of goofy," he said. "Second, the process for applying those goofy rules is extremely burdensome and complicated. And third, the result that is provided to manage the goofy rules and the cumbersome process have been largely inadequate in many economies."

In comparison, the process for Chinese to obtain an Australian visa is starkly easy, he said. The process "is online, it takes about five minutes, it costs 25 Australian dollars and you get an electronic answer, which is your visa, in five minutes."

The "core question," Dunkerley said, is this: "Do tourists visiting the United States represent such a threat to the physical and economic security of the United States to warrant the complexity and difficulty and expense of applying for a U.S. visa, when after all it is an export of the United States?"