The news on the vaccine front has been encouraging, especially noting the results: The rates of COVID-19 infection have dropped like a stone. The lifting of travel restrictions, which will hinge on reaching a specific vaccination benchmark, is on the horizon.

All of that has fed a promising recovery of Hawaii’s long-shuttered tourism industry, which is welcome. But it’s also fueling a well-founded concern that an uncontrolled flood of tourists will crowd the beaches and generally overwhelm the natural resources.

Momentum is pushing Hawaii back toward a prepandemic status quo in tourism — and that’s just not good enough.

On Friday, Gov. David Ige, known for being extraordinarily cautious in ratcheting back the state’s pandemic restrictions, seemed positively giddy about the improved conditions, enough to pledge lifting all travel restrictions as soon as 70% of Hawaii’s population is vaccinated.

That’s huge. Hawaii has benefited from its physical isolation, enabling officials to control the introduction of new cases from travelers, whether visiting tourists or residents returning from trips. Here at home, the rules on masking and distancing have been stricter, and more persistent, than in most mainland states.

Ige has taken some heat for this, undeservedly. Keeping restrictions in place, holding out vaccination targets as the carrot for getting them lifted, have been the rational approach to achieving the ultimate goal: a population with a high degree of immunity from COVID-19. The fact that there are still infection clusters cropping up underscores the wisdom of continued vigilance.

The governor and other officials are bullish that Hawaii will reach the vaccination breakthrough point, making the islands even more accessible to visitors than it already is. That’s a fairly safe assumption, judging by the public enthusiasm about the state’s vaccination incentive program of prizes and discounts, also unveiled on Friday.

So we’d better be prepared. Results of a new survey of residents’ opinions on tourism sketched out a reasonable starting point.

On Tuesday, the University of Hawaii Public Policy Center released results of its online survey of 700 respondents, conducted April 16-May 3 by Anthology Research.

Public sentiments about Hawaii’s bedrock visitor industry, always keenly felt, have been sharpened further in recent years. Prepandemic, tourism saw a record year in 2019, with 10 million visitors arriving and conflicts over the spillover effects, including a surging and largely illegal vacation-rentals sector.

It’s plain from the survey that Hawaii residents, who in the lockdown enjoyed beaches, parks and other attractions with scant crowds, don’t want to see them overrun.

But residents also witnessed what happens when that industry is shut down, as it was with the onslaught of COVID-19. Thousands lost their jobs, many businesses closed permanently.

What people want and need is a healthy tourism industry, but one that is much more carefully managed than it’s been.

About 52% of survey respondents favored limiting visitor counts, “if possible.” More than three-fourths, 78%, would like to see tourists charged fees of some kind to use parks and required to make reservations to visit publicly owned attractions.

Of course, the state can’t restrict mainland arrivals, so the only “possible” restriction is to implement the management tools that residents favor so strongly. Fees and reservations in place at Hanauma Bay State Park serve as a model for how this can work — and should be replicated at similarly popular spots.

What’s unfortunate is that the system for regulating tourism is in an unsettled place, just when the need to hammer out such a plan, is so dire. The passage of House Bill 862, now sitting on Ige’s desk, takes away a dedicated source of revenue from the Hawaii Tourism Authority, which complicates securing the funds needed for long-range planning. But the bill prescribes the agency’s only allotment of general funds, so a veto would be difficult to defend.

But the bill does leave in place the HTA’s own careful framework for tourism, “four pillars” of management that put a needed emphasis on stewardship. The Ige administration will need to find a way to coordinate the programs, now split among different agencies, so the overall goals can be met.

Further, the city Department of Planning and Permitting must move swiftly to finalize Honolulu’s regulatory scheme for vacation rentals. Pressure to turn residences into short-term accommodations is stronger than ever in the current economic downturn, and strict gatekeeping is essential.

The state is truly at a crossroads now. Officials are on the verge of opening the pandemic gates, assuming island efforts to beat back the virus hit a key vaccination threshold.

The state clearly needs a plan for regulating tourism, and the time for getting the blueprint in place has come — time to put visitor and kamaaina needs in better balance.