HONOLULU — As foreign visitors and Japanese alike were fleeing the unfolding nuclear crisis in Japan this week, a still-fragile travel industry waited anxiously to find out what long-term impact the crisis would have on travel to and from the country.
This week it became clear that public fears of radiation, rational or otherwise, were already affecting travel far beyond Japan.
Hawaii, whose largest inbound market after the U.S. mainland is Japan, was bracing for a significant drop in tourism from Japan, which is its largest foreign market, and from U.S. visitors concerned about radiation from Japan reaching Hawaii.
And in a move reminiscent of the world’s response to the H1N1 swine flu virus, which dealt a serious blow to global travel because of public fears of exposure to infected fellow passengers, airports and port authorities around the world last week began testing passengers and cargo from Japan for raised levels of radiation.
South Korea and Taiwan found higher-than-normal levels of radiation on 28 airline passengers arriving from Japan, according to a report from Reuters.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency confirmed it had begun testing air and maritime traffic from Japan "out of an abundance of caution."
As of late Thursday, the agency said, no aircraft entering the U.S. had tested positive for harmful levels of radiation.
Officials with the customs agency and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission declined to elaborate on what levels might be considered dangerous or to say if exposed travelers might pose a risk to others passengers.
"That would be highly speculative," a commission spokesman said.
In its statement, the CBP said only that "any travelers who manifest signs of radiation sickness are referred to health authorities and provided appropriate treatment."
CBP also said it "will continue to evaluate the potential risks posed by radiation contamination on inbound travelers and cargo and will adjust its detection and response protocols, in coordination with its interagency partners, as developments warrant."
Hawaii cancellations pile up
In Hawaii, which is just beginning to recover from the global economic slowdown, radiation concerns were already causing a drop in tourism, despite assurances from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission that there was no current or expected radiation threat to the state.
"We’re starting to get a lot of cancellations from people who don’t want to go because they’re concerned about possible radiation exposure in the Hawaiian Islands," said Jack Richards, president and CEO of Pleasant Holidays. "We’ve had 60 cancellations now in the last two days ... and these 60 bookings can be directly attributed to concerns with radiation exposure in Hawaii."
The islands were also seeing a significant drop in tourism from Japan. Japanese visitors made up 17.3% of all arrivals to Hawaii in 2010 and spent a total of $1.93 billion in the islands.
"We do expect business from Japan to decline," said Mike McCartney, president and CEO of the Hawaii Tourism Authority. "And we’re putting together alternative plans. It’s too early to say what they are yet, but we are doing a market analysis right now."
Angela Vento, regional director of sales and marketing for Starwood Hawaii, said the Japanese market accounts for about 40% of her company’s business in Honolulu and 20% statewide.
Vento said Starwood’s Hawaii properties had already seen several groups and meetings cancellations by Japanese corporations, and in the months ahead she expects fewer Japanese bookings at Starwood’s Oahu properties.
"In Waikiki, we are anticipating a significant drop," Vento said.
Although the Environmental Protection Agency set up extra radiation monitors in Hawaii and on other Pacific Islands, Pleasant has made an effort to combat travelers' concerns by posting a link on its website to a Hawaii Civil Defense Web page that carried statements from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
"Available information indicates weather conditions have taken the small releases from the Fukushima reactors out to sea away from the population," the regulatory commission said.
"Given the thousands of miles between the two countries, Hawaii, Alaska, the U.S. Territories and the U.S. West Coast are not expected to experience any harmful levels of radioactivity."
A business travel challenge
In Japan, meanwhile, it was getting harder and harder to find departing flights, said Michael Steiner, executive vice president of Ovation Corporate Travel in New York, which handles business travel for law firms, financial services firms and consulting groups.
He said the company had about 300 travelers in Japan when the quake hit. But most were in Tokyo, and the agency was able to get everyone out but still would have to rearrange the travel of about 2,500 clients over the next two weeks.
As the nuclear crisis unfolded, he said, clients with offices there began focusing on getting their workers out of the country.
"It wasn’t hard to get flights after, but it’s getting more and more challenging now," he said. "More and more people want to leave, and flights are being affected."
Additionally, he said, some airlines, like Lufthansa, were beginning to limit flights into Japan out of concern of flying through radiation clouds.
Asked to assess what long-term impact the crisis might have on inbound travel to Japan, he said there was no way to even speculate.
Tour operators were also unsure.
"Before the nuclear disaster began to unfold, I would have expected us to resume our tours to Japan (especially the fairly unscathed areas of Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka) by May or June," said Peggy Goldman, president of Friendly Planet Travel.
"However, now I am not so sure. Probably, if the nuclear problem is solved and the radiation readings fall, we can still look toward a summer or fall resumption of tours. If the radiation issue remains, however, it becomes impossible to predict."
On the other hand, Goldman said, she was not seeing much fear of travel to other destinations.
"Interest in our tours to China remains very high, and we are getting many, many requests each day for our Thailand, Vietnam and other Asia programs," she said.
Japan hotel bookings 'fall off the shelf'
There were no reports of major damage or any injuries at any hotels operated by the world’s big chains in Japan.
But because the country’s hospitality landscape outside of Tokyo and the country’s other major cities includes some 55,000 privately owned guesthouse-type hotels called ryokans, it was hard to know how hard the industry might have been hit in the areas most affected by the quake and tsunami.
Julie Parodi, senior director of strategy planning and analysis at Pegasus Solutions, which processes billions of hotel transactions, said hotel bookings in Japan "just fell off the shelf" after the March 11 earthquake.
"To give you an idea," she said, "hotels went from experiencing double-digit increases in bookings [over last year] to triple-digit decreases."
Cancellation percentages "went through the roof."
Parodi, who is in the process of compiling a detailed report on the impact the disaster has had on Japan hotel bookings, said the earthquake and subsequent tsunami and nuclear power plant failures "basically brought travel in Japan to its knees ... and things are not going to get back to normal for a long time."
This article was reported by Shane Nelson in Honolulu, Jeri Clausing in Denver and Michelle Baran in Egypt. It was written by Jeri Clausing.