ISLAND VOICES
Look to China for Hawai'i's tourism

By Creighton Goldsmith

The recent story that Japan Airlines is cutting one Narita-Honolulu flight per day due to sagging demand should serve as notice to all of us that the canary in the coal mine just fell off its perch.

It should come as no surprise that the Japanese are losing interest in visiting Hawai'i. In the past 10 years, Hawai'i has seen nearly 30 million Japanese tourists visit our shores. That's a little less than half the population of Japan aged 15-65 years old.

For the Japanese, Hawai'i is "been there, done that." Cheaper and more exotic destinations are calling.

Rex Johnson will certainly have his work cut out for him at the Hawai'i Tourism Authority. Most significantly, he can no longer count on the travelers who, up until the early 1990s, had to transit through Honolulu because the jets couldn't fly from Asia nonstop to North America without refueling.

Those days are gone forever. With new 747-400s and twin-engine extended-range jets, Hong Kong to New York is a common and heavily trafficked nonstop route.

Couple this with inadequate port facilities for the cruise ships that could otherwise be expanding and we've got a prescription for trouble in paradise.

Can we get ourselves out of this mess? The answer is yes. I see a grand future for Hawai'i if we do two things: We continue to give Evan Dobelle the support he needs to turn the University of Hawai'i into the premier learning center of the Pacific Rim and we market Hawai'i tourism to the People's Republic of China.

An American education is the dream of every Asian youth and will build goodwill and world stability for generations to come. The potential for Chinese tourism to Hawai'i is unlimited.

When Galen Fox was at DBEDT, he saw that potential and was instrumental in getting the first organized tourist groups to visit here. As he correctly pointed out, there is a growing middle class in China and they want to see Hawai'i, Disneyland and Las Vegas.

If we can have one-tenth of one percent of the population of China visit Hawai'i every year, that's 1.25 million visitors. Surely we could get 5,000 Chinese students to attend UH, all paying out-of-state tuition.

Let's get started on those Mandarin television ads and dorm rooms now.

Creighton Goldsmith is chief inspector for U.S. Customs in Honolulu.