Hoku Dudoit got to Daniel K. Inouye International Airport on Friday well in advance of his Kona flight but was questioning whether he should have come sooner as he waited in a line that snaked all the way out to the airport curb.

Dudoit, who was traveling with his kids, 11-year-old Hiilei and 9-year-old Laakea, said they got to the airport two hours early because he was expecting crowds of travelers. It was the family’s first flight since the pandemic.

“It’s a little bit more crowded than the last time that we flew,” he said. “It takes more planning, too.”

More than 1.8 million people went through U.S. airports Thursday, and the daily number was widely expected to cross 2 million at least once over the long holiday weekend, which would be the highest mark since early March 2020.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas warned people to expect long lines at airports and appealed for travelers to be patient.The rise in travel appears to be fueled by an increase in COVID-19 vaccinations as well as an improving economy.

Vacation destinations like Las Vegas, Hawaii and Myrtle Beach, S.C., were among the top destinations for holiday revelers, according to AAA. Paula Twidale, a spokeswoman for the auto club and insurer, said the pickup in travel began in April as more Americans got vaccinated and the weather improved.

Hawaii Safe Travels, which requires trans-Pacific travelers to take a COVID test to get out of a 10-day travel quarantine, is the nation’s strictest travel entry policy. The state offers a vaccination exemption only to interisland travelers who were vaccinated in Hawaii.

It’s thought that domestic travelers could become less tolerant of Hawaii’s entry policies as travel opens up more widely elsewhere.

But the strict protocol didn’t seem to be much of a deterrent to travelers Friday. It also didn’t stop a group of Mauna Kea activists from giving their Azores-bound friends Paul Gallagher and Yasue Beisaw a traditional cultural send-off at the airport curb near where swarms of masked travelers were waiting in Transportation Security Administration lines.

There was chanting, conch shell blowing, hula dancing, ukulele playing and awa drinking. They also gave the traditional Polynesian greeting called a honi, where two people connect by pressing their noses together and inhaling at the same time.

Makaio Villanueva said, “We are just participating in a portion of the ceremony that connected us to our struggle, specifically at Mauna Kea. Traditionally, this ceremony isn’t held in a space like this, but the sacred place is within ourselves.”

The activists managed to carve out a rare moment of intimacy, not often seen during this pandemic or even in the recovery, which by all accounts is progressing faster than expected.

Hawaiian Airlines anticipated the holiday traffic and deployed Team Kokua volunteers to help travelers depart from the Honolulu and Maui airports for the first time since the pandemic.

Hawaiian spokeswoman Marissa Villegas said: “We are actually operating more flights between the U.S. mainland and Hawaii next month than we did at the same time in 2019, primarily due to our new routes and nonstop services to and from Maui.

“However, we are doing significantly less international flying, and while our neighbor island schedule has been picking up, it remains below what we used to offer pre-pandemic.”

Debbie Nakanelua-Richards, Hawaiian’s director of community and cultural relations, said some 64 employees from departments across the company volunteered to take a shift guiding guests through TSA checkpoint lines and directing them to their designated check-in lobby.

Nakanelua-Richards said Team Kokua has come out for other peak travel periods, but this was the first time during the pandemic.

“It’s been steady busy. This is a record high for us during the pandemic,” Nakanelua-Richards said. “It’s not what it’s been in the past, but people are willing and excited to travel.”

They are also a bit rusty, she said.

“I’ve spoken to local residents who are visiting family and haven’t traveled in a year and three months. I’m seeing people unpacking and repacking their suitcase and transferring items. They’ve forgotten what 50 pounds feels like,” she said.

Nakanelua-Richards said that guests have been prepared overall, with some arriving as early as three hours before their flights.

Mark Zender, who normally works as Hawaiian’s director of airport operations communications and performance, said he spent much of Friday morning “pulling people out of lines and putting them in the correct lines.”

He also answered questions about mask-wearing, which is no longer required outdoors in Hawaii, but is required on airport grounds and on planes.

Zender suggests travelers try to take care of as much of their travel check-in as they can online before heading to the busy airport.

The U.S. trans-Pacific travel market is expected to come back so strongly this summer that carriers during each summer month have added more more than 1 million seats. That outpaces the seats that were available in the Hawaii market during the same period in 2019, which was the best year for Hawaii tourism ever.

The bump in air travel has led to a corresponding bump in lodging reservations during the Memorial Day weekend and beyond. Many of Hawaii’s car rental businesses and restaurants are so busy that they are having trouble keeping up with demand.

John De Fries, Hawaii Tourism Authority president and CEO, sent out a letter Thursday informing the agency’s travel distribution list, which includes media, that Hawaii is experiencing a travel car shortage and advising that travelers should book their rental cars before making the rest of their travel arrangements.

HTA board member Dylan Ching, who is vice president of operations for TS Restaurants, said during an HTA meeting Thursday that some restaurants are booked out until July. HTA board Chairman George Kam said he’s heard of three-hour waits at Duke’s Waikiki.

Mufi Hannemann, president and CEO of the Hawaii Lodging &Tourism Association, said the Memorial Day travel bump is serving as a “segue to a slamming summer, with steady increases every week.”

Hannemann said hotel occupancy levels in early May were slightly above 50% and now in late May are 65%.

Some properties are doing even better than that.

Lynette Eastman, general manager of the Surfjack Hotel &Swim Club in Waikiki, said it’s a good sign that her hotel is sold out for Memorial Day, which is “traditionally the door that opens summer.”

“We had to shut down distribution channels for Friday, Saturday and Sunday,” she said. “It’s the first time that we’ve had to stop taking reservations for a whole three days since the pandemic.”

Eastman said her hotel started exceeding 2019 revenues this month, and the trend looks to continue through August.

“It’s my best summer ever,” she said. “I’m doing better than 2019, Hawaii’s best year for tourism.”

Hannemann said pent-up travel demand “from people who have been cooped up for a long time” is driving Hawaii’s tourism recovery. However, he said travelers could grow disenchanted with Hawaii if the state doesn’t make good on its plan to offer vaccination exemptions for trans-Pacific travelers sometime this summer.

“As more destinations make travel accessible and yet safe, it could be a challenge if we don’t have our own incentives to bring people here, like vaccination exemptions,” he said.

Hannemann said Hawaii also must continue to address tourism infrastructure challenges, such as the difficulty in making a car rental or restaurant reservation.

“We’re noticing that the hotels that have dining facilities and restaurants are starting to get much busier, but it is exacerbating the challenge of getting employees to come back to work or finding new hires,” he said.

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The Associated Press contributed to this story.