Editorial: Clear, consistent tourist outreach needed in Hawaii

For Hawaii’s tourism industry, it has been a rough week of reopened trans-Pacific travel. Opportunities now must be taken to smooth out bumps in the welcome-back effort statewide, starting with the “Kuleana Campaign,” initiated through a Hawaii Tourism Authority and Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau joint effort.

On Tuesday, six full days after Hawaii’s tourism reopening, the HTA announced that a new campaign video encouraging travelers to comply with COVID-19 directives had been sent to airline, hotel and activity “partners” to share with their customers in email confirmations, in-flight, in-room and on property as available.

In response, state Senate President Ron Kouchi rightly called for the in-flight protocols video to be screened on all incoming trans-Pacific flights — not just on the current “select airlines.”

In addition to ensuring that all arrivals view the new-normal message, HTA and HVCB should rework its mismatched visuals to send visitors clear and firm communications. The video offers up an aloha-filled welcome briefly spotlighting hula dancers, watermen, a chef and a cultural practitioner — all unmasked. Of nearly one dozen individuals featured, only one straps on a mask as a narrator says warmly: “Wear a mask in public, always.”

A short stroll in Waikiki this week offers up plenty of evidence that a less soft-focus and more-direct message is needed.

Asked about the travel reopening in a news conference Thursday, Mayor Kirk Caldwell acknowledged the insufficient education to arriving travelers, at the Honolulu airport and elsewhere — and said he would be pressing HTA and hotel officials to step up efforts to communicate and ensure that Hawaii’s COVID-19 rules are followed.

Since the traveler pretesting program began on Oct. 15, Honolulu police have issued several thousand warnings and hundreds of citations for not wearing masks and failing to maintain required physical distancing. While visitors come to the islands to relax, there can be no relaxing of mask-wearing, physical-distancing and other virus-related safety directives.

More than 10,000 travelers arrived on launch day of the state’s pre-travel testing program; daily arrivals have since settled in the 2,000-to-4,000 range that the tourism industry had expected.

Industry observers say most hotels that have reopened are operating at less than one-quarter occupancy, and that the best hoteliers could hope for near-term is a paltry occupancy of 50%. The University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization has said it doesn’t expect to see meaningful economic gains until the middle of next year, and an attenuated recovery period thereafter.

Even with a slow-paced increase in visitors counts, Hawaii will be increasingly dependent on trans- Pacific traveler buy-in to help prevent a surge in infection rates, which can quickly strain the limits of the state’s health care system. Nearly every resident here is now acquainted with what happens when we let our guard down.

HTA’s new president and CEO, John De Fries, has said visitor education will continue to be in the works both before and after arrival to stress awareness of “responsibility to keep themselves and our residents safe.” To that end, a more effective in-flight video should be followed by distribution of aloha-print masks and the latest state and county restriction information.

Because some restrictions are not fixed, hinging instead on recent COVID case counts and positivity rates, travelers should be afforded ample help in sorting through what’s expected. In regards to mask-wearing, a straightforward statewide requirement, along with unambiguous messaging and a well-publicized fine for violation, could go a long way toward more compliance.

Moving forward, tourism-focused kuleana education about COVID-19’s threat in Hawaii must be both candid and nonstop.