Direct flights between Japan and Hawaii Island are expected to resume late this year, and there’s talk of a third operator entering the market with service to Ellison Onizuka Kona International Airport at Keahole.
The larger return of the Japanese travel market is expected this summer with direct flights from Japan to Honolulu resuming operations, said Ross Birch, executive director of the Island of Hawaii Visitor Bureau. His statement follows a meeting last week on Oahu with a delegation from the Japan Association of Travel Agents on bringing back Japan-Hawaii travel.
The resumption of Japanese travel to Hawaii is expected to pick up with Golden Week, which starts April 29 this year. The week contains multiple Japanese holidays during which many nationals take time off to enjoy and travel.
“We’ll see some of the trickle down that will come from that, but we’re not looking until most likely late fall or early winter 2022 for Hawaii Island,” Birch said, later noting that November will most likely be the month though it could be earlier “if everything falls into place.” “By next year, we’ll be back.”
Birch said the up-tick in Japanese travel to the state should coincide with a decrease in domestic travel from the U.S. mainland as travelers seek out different destinations. For a good amount of time amid the coronavirus pandemic, Hawaii was the best and safest option for travel from the U.S. with international travel shut down until late last fall.
“What we’re seeing now is the U.S. market had pent up demand and we’re really riding a wave with the U.S. market really going above and beyond to make up for some of the gap in our lost international and Japanese visitors,” Birch said. “It’ll be perfect timing for the international market to kick in and replace a lot of that.”
Birch expects there will be a similar pent up demand for the Japanese to visit Hawaii, much like the state saw when it allowed domestic travel to resume in October 2020.
“We’re going to see kind of a second wave when that time comes,” he said, noting that Japan’s quarantine and travel restrictions have been easing in recent months and he expects they will loosen up more this month.
There’s also talk of a third airline entering the Japan-Kona market, Birch said. ANA, All Nippon Airways, is exploring a direct route to Kona International Airport, which would be in addition to flights operated by Japan Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines.
“They’re looking at the potential of what the ability is to land an A380 in Kona,” Birch said noting the plane would be one of ANA’s four Airbus A380s it unveiled in 2019.
The “Flying Honu,” as the double-decker plane is called, carries more than 500 passengers, which would be a boon for the island, however, officials are trying to figure out how to not only fit the plane at the airport but also how to disembark passengers from such a large plane without Jetways.
“They are looking at the options,” Birch said.
No matter the direct flight from Japan they arrive on, when Japanese travelers land in Kona they will be welcomed with a new Federal Inspection Services facility that was completed late last year.
“The facility is going to be an amazing facility. They are going to clear customs in a far more upscale and state of the art facility in Kona than they will in Honolulu,” he said.
Japan, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, was Hawaii’s biggest source of international tourists, with more than 1.54 million arrivals by air in 2019, nearly triple that of the next largest market, Canada. The figure for Japan plunged to less than 297,000 in 2020 and to 24,232 in 2021, data from the Hawaii Tourism Authority show.
Pre-pandemic, Hawaii Island in 2019 welcomed 168,640 travelers via flights from Japan. That dropped to 35,453 in 2020 and down to 1,360 in 2021 — less than 1% of the travelers that came in 2019.