Hawaii Travel Could Return To 2019 Levels By Year's End

Above, performers at a Honolulu luau. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

This is probably a case of wishful thinking or being overly optimistic.

Hawaii economists think that tourism to the state could return to 2019 levels by the end of the year.

According to West Hawaii Today:

State economists believe travel to the state could nearly return to 2019 levels by the end of this year, but a complete recovery will take more than three years.

At a Monday meeting of the Hawaii Senate Ways and Means Committee, Eugene Tian, economic research administrator for the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism, and Carl Bonham, executive director of the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization, described the economic challenges facing the state in 2021 after nearly a year of the pandemic.

While fallout from the COVID-19 outbreak slashed the total number of visitor arrivals to the state in 2020 to only 27% of 2019’s total, Bonham said an optimistic projection for the state’s economic recovery could see tourism numbers return to 80% of 2019’s total by the end of this year.

Bonham added that a more pessimistic projection would see visitor numbers only increase to 50% of 2019 levels, but said he was more inclined to believe recovery will be on the higher end of that scale.

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