General Hawaii News: March 2007 Archives

Honu, or sea turtles, have lived in Hawaiian waters since antiquity and featured in Hawaiian mythology. Some Hawaiian families honor the honu as their aumakua (personal family guardians). Green sea turtles, named for the color of their body fat rather than their shells, are the largest of the world's hard-shelled sea turtles and second in size only to to the leatherback turtle, which also frequents Hawaiian waters.

These green turtles are a common sight in the large ocean tidepools adjacent to the Outrigger Keauhou Beach Resort Hotel, which offer a protected area for the turtles as well as a large variety of other marine life.

The Honolulu Airport Hotel has joined the Ohana group following a multimillion dollar renovation that included guest room refurbishment and enhancements to its poolside restaurant. The final phase of the renovation, upgrading the rooms in the hotel's annex building, will be completed in June.

Book at room at the Honolulu Airport Hotel here.

The U.S. State Department is alerting travelers applying for U.S. passports that it may take as long as two-and-a-half months for routine processing. Travelers paying extra for expedited processing should expect a four-week wait.

The State Dept. said that aside from the fact that in anticipation of the busy summer season (January through April is typically a peak season for passport applications), the number of applications this year has significantly increased due to the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, a law requiring airline passengers entering the U.S. from within the Western Hemisphere to possess a valid passport.

By June 2009, the same requirement will be extended to travelers crossing U.S. land and seaport borders.

January arrivals and hotel occupancy are down, the result of decreases in arrivals from the East Coast, Japan, and most other international markets. Thanks to higher rooms rates, profitability remains close to the record levels of 2005 and 2006 for hotels, but discounting is already undercutting those increases to some degree and will likely continue into the summer. Oahu, with hotel occupancy at 76%, saw the steepest drop (down 8.6%), with Kauai, at 69%, down a little more than 1% compared with January 2006.

Check out hotel specials at Travel-Hawaii.

HONOLULU, Hawaii — According to Travel Hawaii LLC, Hawaii’s tourism industry is in a slump, with overall January arrivals down nearly 6 percent from January 2006 and the lucrative Japanese market down over 12 percent. The decline comes on the heels of Hawaii’s strict new smoking ban, which went into effect in November, and some in the tourism industry wonder whether the smoking ban is chasing away a good portion of Hawaii’s traditional clientele.

Japan is considered a “smoker’s paradise” relative to the U.S., and some observers feel that the cigarette-puffing Japanese tourists are being deterred from visiting Hawaii, in favor of more smoker-friendly destinations. “We’ve had several Japanese clients with pre-paid bookings cancel their reservations because they couldn’t get a smoking room,” said Chris Freas, Sales Manager at Travel Hawaii, a Hawaii-based Internet retailer (Travel-Hawaii.com).

Since the smoking ban went into effect, Hawaii’s hotels have become decidedly non-friendly to smokers. Entire large hotel chains — including Outrigger, Marriott, and ResortQuest — have banned smoking everywhere in their hotels, offering no smoking rooms or smoking areas anywhere in their hotels.

The most draconian of smoking policies, perhaps, belongs to ResortQuest, a moderately-priced chain of 29 hotels and condos. Clients checking in to a ResortQuest hotel in Hawaii are required to sign an agreement that they will be liable for a cleaning fee of $425 should the hotel determine that they have smoked in their room.

The Outrigger chain, with 25 hotels and condos, charges a cleaning fee of $150 should a client smoke in one of their rooms, though they don’t require the client to sign a separate agreement.

“The imposition of such cleaning fees is good news for non-smokers,” said Freas, “as there’s little chance they’ll check into a room that has that telltale odor.” But such policies will, of course, chase away a portion of potential clients who consider smoking a necessity.

Other hotel chains — such as Starwood and Prince — have dramatically limited the number of smoking rooms and smoking areas in their hotels. Smaller chains and individual hotels have a wide variety of new smoking policies, so smokers should do their research before traveling. A good place to start is the compendium of Hawaii hotel smoking policies that can be found on Travel Hawaii’s web site at:
Travel-Hawaii.com/smoking.html.

“We believe the smoking ban is indeed having an impact on the Hawaii tourism market,” said John Lindelow, owner of Travel Hawaii. “Sales to Japanese travelers, in particular, are down considerably compared to last year, and we can’t help but wonder about the correlation between the ban and this slump in our industry.”

Figures released by the Hawaii State Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism on Feb 27 indicate that arrivals from the U.S. West Coast were actually up by 1.4 percent for January, while arrivals from East Coast residents were down a whopping 9 percent. “Again, we can’t help wondering about this correlation,” said Lindelow, “since the West Coast states have, on average, a lower percentage of smokers than the East Coast and Mid-West states.”

NCL America will launch a program in Maui's public school system to expose the island's future workforce to careers on cruise ships. The cruise line and the Hawaii Dept. of Education will launch "Navigating Through a Sea of Opportunities," a program for 400 eighth grade students who will tour one NCL's three U.S.-flagged ships, meet the crew and learn about jobs in the cruise sector.

Make your Cruise Plans here.

Norwegian Cruise Lines is examining ways to generate profits on its money-losing interisland cruise division. NCL, which operates U.S.-flagged cruise ships in Hawaii, has had to absorb the cost of adding three new ships to its interisland fleet over the past two years. NCL's interisland cruises have faced growing competition from Holland America and other operators that offer transpacific cruises that include a full interisland itinerary.

In the latest edition of US Airways' online newsletter for frequent flyers, the carrier was blunt in describing the lack of space in its reconfigured overhead bins in first class on its A320 aircraft.

"You know that we blew it by putting everything but the kitchen sink up there (e.g. oxygen tanks, video players, survival gear) and took up space that belongs to you and your bags," the newsletter read.

The carrier said it has started taking some of the equipment out.

"It was clearly our mistake, and you can take it out on us, but please don't take it out on the flight crew; they're on your side on this one. They've clearly let us know where we can put our 'equipment.' "

In a battle over minutes between Hawaii's largest legacy air carriers, Hawaiian Airlines recaptured from Aloha Airlines the monthly award for the best on-time arrival record in the nation.

The U.S. Department of Transportation updates the line-up monthly in its Air Travel Consumer Report, whose Monday report used figures from January. Hawaiian was first with a 91.9 percent on-time completion record, Aloha was second with 91.6 percent, and Southwest Airlines was a distant third at 82.4 percent. No other carrier reached 80 percent.

Hawaiian consistently won the top spot for years until Aloha Airlines began filing data in 2006. In November and December Aloha had an even better on-time arrival record than Hawaiian did, and both left all Mainland carriers in their dust.

Book our air ticket at Travel-Hawaii.

THE MAUI OCEAN CENTER at Maalaea Harbor, is offering a camp program between March 19 and 30. The hands-on camp will have kids using all of their senses to explore and learn. Activities will include crab fishing, shoreline hikes and ocean games and is open to kids ages 7 to 12.

For Maui cccomodations go to Maui Condos or Maui Hotels.

About 15 of Hawaii's hotels--mainly high end resorts--charge mandatory daily "Resort Fees" that are added to your bill upon checkout. These fees can cause "checkout sticker shock" if you don't include them in your trip cost calculations. Even the hotels' own web sites often don't make such fees apparent.

At Travel Hawaii, we make every effort to inform our customers exactly which hotels charge Resort Fees so that they can make more informed buying decisions. We state exactly how much the resort fee is and what amenities you'll get in return, on each hotel's web page.

We've also created this handy compendium of Resort Fees which you can click here to see a full list of Resort Fees and what they provide you.

On the plus side, Resort Fees can provide great value, including such things as unlimited use of Spas and fitness centers, free parking, free in-room Internet, and much more. Following is a sample of some Resort Fees and what they provide (see full list here).