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It’s widely understood that tourism accounts for nearly a quarter of Hawaii’s overall economy. Tourism’s economic impact plays an important role on the neighbor islands especially since it takes up an even greater extent of their economies compared to Oahu.

For decades, Japanese tourists made up the lion’s share of foreign visitors to the islands. For obvious reasons, Japan’s proximity, diverse options in flight interconnectivity between Tokyo and Honolulu, paired with a strong Japanese economy, enabled this constant stream of tourists from Japan to Hawaii.

The COVID-19 pandemic changed this dynamic up completely. Tourism from Japan has declined significantly and its economy in a similar situation.

Yet, the Hawaii Tourism Authority is still committing to targeted campaigns toward Japan with initiatives like “Beautiful Hawaii” and “Yappari Hawaii” as well as “an integrated mix of digital and TV advertising, social media, earned media, partnerships and trade education,” according to HTA’s April 30 release.

HTA should be focused on diversifying Hawaii’s inbound tourism market rather than rely on an uncertain Japan.

In HTA’s 2022 Annual Visitor Research Report, at its pre-pandemic peak in 2019, Japan held on to its title of the most international travelers to Hawaii, with nearly 1.6 million visitors alone. By 2022, Japan had only brought in fewer than 200,000 visitors — a whopping 87% reduction.

The rate of change from 2020 to 2022 was a 33.4% decrease. In HTA’s recent visitor statistics report for March 2024, Japanese tourist numbers are still down by 53% since pre-pandemic times.

Japan’s strict Covid-19 guidelines and travel measures also impacted its economy drastically: $1 was equivalent to 137 Japanese yen about a year ago — currently $1 is equivalent to 155 Japanese yen. The Japanese yen is 12% weaker to the dollar from last year, which has only hindered traveling as Japanese are more inclined to save and spend less with this current period of inflation.

Canada has since eclipsed Japan as fielding the most international travelers to Hawaii, from a pre-pandemic 540,000 visitors to 414,000 visitors. From the period of 2020 to 2022, Canadian visitors to the islands have seen a 152% increase. Tourists from other non-Northeast Asian countries saw a 102.5% increase, South Korea with a 139% increase and Australia with a 276% increase during this same period.

Economically, the Australian dollar, Singaporean dollar, Canadian dollar are at a more favorable exchange rate than the Japanese yen, compared to this time last year. Even Japan’s neighbors, South Korea and China, have seen relative stability in their currencies, only 2% and 3% weaker than the U.S. dollar from last year to Japan’s 12%.

HTA should first focus on these tourist markets rather than rely on the former over-dependence with Japan.

We once had connections between South Korea through Jin Air, Scoot Airlines from Singapore and Air Asia from Malaysia before these networks closed their doors at the Honolulu airport. The state government should be encouraging the airlines in countries of our Asia-Pacific region to work with HNL and create new pipelines and re-establish old ones to diversify our inbound tourist markets.

This could start with lowering the barriers of entry for airlines at HNL, like the overseas landing, airport systems support, terminal rental, joint use area charges and other variable fees. For example, a plane from a signatory carrier would be charged $4.92 per 1,000 pounds. A Boeing 777 is roughly 775,000 pounds so the overseas landing fee alone would be around $3,813 per plane.

HNL ranks eighth most expensive in the nation for flight operation costs after airports like San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York. And if the airline is a non-signatory carrier then it is expected to pay 25% more on top of each fee.

Having lived and traveled throughout much of the Asia region (outside of Japan), it is evident marketing toward traveling to Hawaii has been relegated to mostly digital advertisement and word of mouth. In line with attracting tourists from other destination countries, HTA marketing should orient toward encouraging travelers to come to Hawaii during their national holidays, especially if the holidays are within Hawaii’s low-season for travel (like Chuseok for South Korea, Anzac Day for Australia, and National Day for Singapore).

Akin to the Hong Kong Tourist Board’s recent initiatives, HTA should also consider providing visitor consumption vouchers by partnering with restaurants, bars, attractions, hotels and retail outlets to attract tourists from these countries to come and spend in Hawaii.

A revitalization of Hawaii’s overseas tourist market is needed. This requires shifting the focus from Japan to other countries in the region who have relatively stronger economies. However, Hawaii needs to place considerably more resources in this reorientation such as improving flight interconnectivity, lowering barriers of entry for airlines and stronger targeted marketing campaigns toward these markets.