Golden Week loses some luster in Hawaii

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - Golden Week in Hawaii will lose some of its shine this year. Japan Airlines originally had 25 charter flights scheduled, but it will only offer 19, along with four from Korean Air.

"This is in addition to the scheduled service, of which we have seen some cancellation on scheduled service flights, but overall I think the market is holding together pretty well," said David Uchiyama of the Hawaii Tourism Authority.

Golden Week is a treasure for Hawaii's tourism industry. It is one of the busiest seasons for Japanese travel.

"Golden Week is important because it's a perfect time for them to travel with the holidays lined up with the weekends," explained Uchiyama.

Hawaii's visitor industry was on track for a strong year before the recent crisis in Japan. Tourism leaders are still hopeful.

"We see some softness. We're tracking at about 28.3% down, but that's much better than what we had originally projected which was 45%," said Uchiyama.

Based on other events in the past, HTA expects travel from Japan to rebound during the second half of this year.

"What we're looking at is future trends, bookings over cancellations, and we've seen that flip so bookings are exceeding cancellations out of the market right now. So that's a good sign in terms of the road back to recovery," said Uchiyama.

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