[ OUR OPINION ]
Travel should be both
secure and tolerableHAWAII'S tourism industry still is recovering from the terrorist attack on America of nearly three years ago, but the prospects for continued growth are promising. Tourism officials report increasing numbers from all directions, particularly from east of the Rocky Mountains. The main challenge will be dealing with aviation security measures that irritate many travelers, foreign and domestic.
THE ISSUE
The state's tourism industry is reporting an increase in visitors from the mainland and from Asia.
Michael D. Merner of Marketing Garden Ltd., who promotes in Asia for the Hawaii Tourism Authority, says outbound travel from China has grown by five times in the past decade and is expected to reach 100 million tourists a year by 2020. South Korea and Taiwan also are increasing sources of tourism in Hawaii.
"Asia is the world's fastest-growing travel market, and given this enormous growth in outbound travel from Asia, we need to capture as much of this market as possible," Merner told the Star-Bulletin's Allison Schaefers.
The main problem in capitalizing on that growth is that people from those countries must obtain visas to visit the United States. That is the major reason that only 2 percent of the tourists visiting Hawaii in 2002 came from China and Korea.
The problem was made worse in March when the Chinese government shut down a company that was providing a telephone service to the U.S. Embassy to schedule visa interviews. The service was allowed to resume earlier this month, but the visa requirement, which includes background checks, facial photographs and digital scans of index fingers, will continue to be a detriment. Tourism officials need to consider ways of making the process tolerable.
Japan's recovering economy is expected to result in the first increase in tourism from that country in seven years. The number of Japanese visitors peaked in 1997, accounting for one-third of visitors to Hawaii, but that has declined every year, reaching a nadir of 1.3 million last year, only one-fifth of tourists in Hawaii.
The figures from the mainland also are encouraging. Tourism this year from the Western states is 7.2 percent higher than last year, while the number of visitors from states east of the Rockies has risen 8.4 percent, perhaps a result of the increased number of direct flights from Eastern states.
Stiffer security continues to be as much an irritation as an assurance of safety to many travelers. The federal Transportation Security Administration began a "registered traveler" program at the Minneapolis airport this month and plans to extend it later this summer to airports in Houston, Los Angeles, Boston and Washington.
Under the program, people who fly at least once a week in certain markets will be offered a special line through security in return for basic personal information and a fingerprint and iris scan. Honolulu should seek to be next in line for the program, which could reduce lines for those who are not frequent fliers.
