Today marks the start of an economic recovery phase that Hawaii’s travel industry is greeting with enthusiasm and relief. The U.S. has reopened to international travelers who have been both vaccinated and tested for COVID-19, and that represents a sizeable slice of this state’s tourism revenue.

Gov. David Ige last week set the stage for this by announcing the alignment of the state’s Safe Travels Hawaii screening program with the new federal travel protocols. International travelers flying directly into Hawaii will be checked for pandemic clearances by the flight’s carrier at the point of origin, and then no further screening will be needed at the Hawaii end.

But passengers making a stop in the U.S. before embarking on a domestic flight for the Hawaii leg of the journey will be treated as domestic travelers and will go through the Safe Travels review process. Vaccination status should clear them through, but they still have to sign into the website (travel.hawaii.gov), create an account and follow the same steps as U.S. travelers.

Unvaccinated U.S. travelers who come into Hawaii through COVID-19 pre-travel testing will benefit from a slightly more relaxed federal stance. International travelers can still get a nucleic acid amplification test (NAAT), a diagnostic test of which the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) nose-swab test is the most common type.

Alternatively, though, they can choose an antigen test, the faster (and usually cheaper) method that detects a particular protein signaling an infection. It’s less sensitive to COVID-19 than the NAAT category and considered less accurate than the “gold standard” of the PCR test.

At this point in the pandemic, however, Hawaii has built up its public-health shield through a stronger community immunization rate. Making the testing option for incoming domestic travelers consistent with international rules reduces the logistical complications. As long as other basic masking and distancing precautions are kept, at least at the start, this offers a pragmatic solution.

Safe Travels Hawaii is all but certain to remain in place for some time, based on any realistic global view. Even in the U.S., with higher levels of immunization than most countries, the COVID-19 status is uneven, especially in areas with low vaccine uptake.

The virus is expected to flare around the world for many months, so the threat of new variants is very real. Hawaii leaders seem inclined to keep at least a basic level of screening, which makes sense.

But the need to reboot this travel part of the state’s economy is also very real. To cite one example: Peter Ingram, CEO at Hawaiian Airlines, said that at least for his carrier, international travel represented fully one-quarter of the company revenue.

Speaking Wednesday on the Honolulu Star-Advertiser’s “Spotlight Hawaii” webcast, Ingram said the airlines’ mainstay domestic travel business is likely to recover fully, but it’s hard to make up a 25% loss.

He’s anticipating that signs of the market recovery include the restart of flights to Sydney in December, with the all-important Japanese market guiding through the first two quarters of 2022 to approach pre-pandemic levels by summer.

International travelers are seen as bigger spenders whose tourism footprint is more than offset by their investment in the economy. That said, Hawaii leaders will be compelled to manage how tourism taps the natural environment, protecting the islands’ most sensitive destinations, as this all plays out.

And, of course, visitors must keep within public-health guardrails. World travelers who are also good neighbors: Welcome back.