Visitor count rises over past 3 days, Hawaii Tourism Authority says
CRAIG T. KOJIMA / APRIL 1
Ikaika Picanso walked through an empty Hawaiian Airlines terminal Wednesday at the Daniel K. Inouye International Airport to get to his Big Island flight on April 1.
The number of visitors coming to Hawaii despite a mandatory 14-day self-quarantine went up over the past three days.
The Hawaii Tourism Authority reported today that Saturday’s trans-Pacific passenger count was 683, including 106 visitors and 220 residents. The count also included 204 airline crew members, 93 transit passengers, and 56 intended new residents for Oahu and four for Kona.
The overall count of passengers on Saturday was 683, which compared with 628 on Friday and 543 on Thursday. The number of visitors on Friday was 94 and it was 89 on Thursday.
More flights came into the islands on Saturday, too. There were 25 trans-Pacific flights as compared to 22 on Friday and 20 on Thursday.
Since March 26, when Gov. David Ige instituted a 14-day mandatory self-quarantine for all arriving trans-Pacific passengers, 1,476 visitors have come into the state. That quarantine was expanded to include interisland travelers on Wednesday. A count of interisland passengers is not yet available.
Violations of the quarantine mandate could result in a misdemeanor with fines up to $5,000 and/or up to one year in prison, or both.
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While the count has been going up recently it’s still significantly below historic levels. Normally, at this time of year, roughly 270,000 visitors would have come during the same period. In March 2019, average daily passenger counts were above 30,000.
In March 2019, HTA reported that there was an average of 253,498 visitors statewide on any given day. That same month, some 939,064 visitors visited the Hawaiian islands and 927,246 came by air.
