Beautiful images of Hawaii got Aimei Xu and her husband, Jianjun Zhou, dreaming of traveling here, but they put off booking their trip because of the time involved.
The opportunity to take a nine-hour nonstop flight from Shanghai to Hawaii was the turning point for this family. The couple, along with their 8-year-old daughter, Danni, were among the 271 passengers who arrived here Tuesday on the first nonstop, scheduled flight between China and Hawaii.
"Other popular destinations, like Bali, are cheaper, but now it takes much longer to get to them," Xu said. "This flight is convenient and easy."
The new flight offers a chance for Hawaii’s visitor industry to capture a greater share of China’s vast outbound travel market, which the World Tourism Organization has estimated could reach 100 million by 2020. As such, the occasion warranted an in-person welcome from Gov. Neil Abercrombie for passengers on China Eastern Airlines’ inaugural flight.
"Our relationship with China goes back decades and decades," Abercrombie told the travelers. "This is the beginning of a new era for us where people from China can travel here for friendship and enjoyment."
While Hawaii was one of the first states, along with Nevada, to open a tourism office in China, those early efforts to attract tourists were limited by restrictions, which prohibit marketing leisure travel. The Hawaii Tourism Authority has been aggressively working to bring in more Chinese visitors since the signing of a memorandum of understanding in 2007 made leisure travel to the U.S. possible for the Chinese. However, cumbersome visa policies and the lack of nonstop flights continued to make Hawaii a hard sell against less expensive, closer sun-sand-and-surf destinations.
"Today’s landmark flight is wonderful news for Hawaii’s tourism economy, and we remain committed to supporting this new route and developing airlift to meet demand," said Mike McCartney, HTA president and chief executive.
China Eastern’s new route arrives in Honolulu on Tuesdays and Fridays at 9:50 a.m. HST and departs for Shanghai at 11:50 a.m. HST the same days. The service could boost Hawaii tourism, create jobs and provide up to $60 million in annual visitor spending, McCartney said.
The flights could increase Chinese arrivals to Hawaii by 37 percent to 91,000 this year, said David Uchiyama, HTA’s vice president of brand management.
"We’ve increased our projections for this market," Uchiyama said.
Max Zhang, product manager for CTrip, a Chinese travel service, said demand for Hawaii has exceeded expectations for China Eastern’s travel partners.
"We’ve oversold the first six flights," Zhang said. "August is a very popular travel time because it coincides with Qixi Festival, or Chinese Valentine’s Day. About half of these travelers are honeymooners."
Zhang said he and other travel sellers, like U-tour, are hoping that flight demand will linger. Easing the visa process or issuing a visa waiver would keep up momentum, he said.
"For most Chinese it still takes two to three months to get a visa," Zhang said. "For this trip it only took one month. That definitely helped."
Abercrombie, who supports efforts to help facilitate business travel and trade by removing burdens on international travel within the 21 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation member countries, said he continues to push for a visa waiver for Chinese travelers.
"Perhaps they can use Hawaii as a test case," he said.
