Hawaii’s World
I can't discover who first said, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em." Cruise ship expansion
in HawaiiSecond of two articles
First of two articlesBut this pragmatic advice applies to Hawaii and the thriving cruise industry. Staterooms afloat worldwide probably exceed the 67,000 hotel rooms of Hawaii and are growing toward the 110,000 of Las Vegas. They are increasing to 10 to 15 percent a year whereas Hawaii is stagnant.
We face good news and bad news. The good news is that American Classic Voyages has contracted to spend over $800 million to add two 1,900-passenger ships to Hawaii interisland service, the first in 2003. They will supplement the Independence, which sometimes packs in 1,000. It, in turn, may get a temporary companion vessel even before the first new ship is in service. We have had no comparable hotel investment, ever. And the $800 million is only a starter figure. Full outfitting may be $1.5 billion.
In five years we should have a 500- or 600-percent increase in interisland cruise passengers. This is happening only because of a 1997 Act of Congress pushed by U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye that gives American Classic and its subsidiary, American Hawaii Cruises, a 20-year monopoly on Hawaii service. The quid pro quo is that American Classic will pay the higher costs of building its new ships in the United States, thus helping revive our shipbuilding industry, and will operate with U.S. crews.
The Jones Act allows only U.S. bottoms and U.S. crews to carry passengers and cargo between U.S. ports. Foreign ship calls still number nearly 50 a year in Honolulu and 220 statewide, but they have to connect while going to and from places like Vancouver, Acapulco, the Panama Canal, the South Pacific or Asia. This inhibits visits but we still hope for many more.
Our bad news is the limited capacity of our ports, which will be expensive to expand. Only Honolulu can take four or five cruise ships in one day. Lahaina and Kona can be reached only by ferrying passengers in from offshore anchorages. One or two ships are all that can dock at one time at Nawiliwili, Kahului and Hilo.
I wrote on Tuesday about experiencing the cruise season in Alaska, which draws more than 20 liners each week for nearly five months. Such volume among our ports is unlikely because of their limits but we still can get a much bigger bite of the cruise pie.
Hawaii service can be year-round. Our fellow Alaska cruise passengers who had sailed around Hawaii called the experience as attractive as Alaska cruising. The 49th and 50th states make good cruise bookends -- beautiful tropic ports at one end, beautiful inland passages, glaciers and snowy mountains at the other.
Worldwide spending for new liners is awesome -- $15 billion for deliveries of 46 new vessels between 1999 and 2002. Passenger capacities up to 3,400 per ship. Total new passenger capacity -- 76,000, the equivalent of about 38,000 hotel rooms compared to Hawaii's 67,000.
We found Princess Cruises immensely professional in meeting our needs -- enough so for a showroom comedian to joke about the lady who went to the bathroom three times one night and came back to find her bed made each time.
Hawaii also is highly professional in tourism, one of the very best. From cruising we now get and can get still more of: (1) spending ashore by cruise visitors, (2) hotel stays before and after cruises, and (3) future land visits from those who want to experience Hawaii more fully. We remain one of the world's prettiest places.
Second of two articles
First of two articles
A.A. Smyser is the contributing editor
and former editor of the the Star-Bulletin
His column runs Tuesday and Thursday.