The arrival of a delegation from the Japan Association of Travel Agents in Hawaii this week is a positive sign that the recovery of tourism from Japan, the state’s top international market, is finally on an accelerated timeline.

The JATA inspection team was supposed to be in Hawaii last year but the trip was postponed due to the threat of new COVID-19 variants, which delayed the resumption of international travel for both destinations. Indeed most of last year, Japan was in intermittent states of emergency, and the Japanese government was still holding fast to policies that prevented travel across prefectural borders.

JATA Chairperson Hiroyuki Takahashi told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, following a reception tonight at the Hawaii Convention Center, that he expects recovery of Japanese visitors to Hawaii will start this month with the popular Golden Week travel period, with significant returns by summer.

Takahashi said he expects to see Japanese visitors return to Hawaii this year at 40% of the pre-pandemic 2019 level.

“For 2023 we see our market returning to 2019 levels and that is our road map to recovery,” he said. “My personal forecast is that 2023 will beat 2019 levels. If you ask me why, we have incredible pent-up demand for travel from the Japanese to Hawaii and there will be an explosion once we are able to do that freely.”

Takahashi said it was important for the JATA delegation to come to Hawaii to see “with its own eyes” what customers would have to go through to travel here. They also wanted to ensure the environment in Hawaii was safe, and that Japanese visitors would be welcomed.

“We were able to see how safe and how the people of Hawaii are returning to a sense of normalcy back here in Hawaii. Mask mandates and infection levels are down,” Takahashi said. “It was very good to see this and confirm this and to take this back to our customers and tell them it is safe to come to Hawaii.”

Gov. David Ige, who greeted the JATA delegation, said after the reception that he has told Japanese officials that Hawaii has had the lowest infection rate in the nation and continues to monitor safety.

“This is really just the next opportunity and milestone as we begin to recover our economy,” Ige said, adding that the return of Japanese tourists is vitally important for many Hawaii businesses.

The road to recovery has been rough. While the U.S. travel market to Hawaii started the year close to pre-pandemic levels, travelers from Japan were still nearly 98% below 2019 and 2020. More than 1.5 million visitors came to Hawaii from Japan in 2019, and spent more than $2 billion.

Only 5,031 visitors from Japan were counted during the first two months of this year, which was significantly lower than the 241,071 Japanese visitors who came during the same period in 2020, before Hawaii detected its first case of COVID-19.

Visitors from Japan spent $19.7 million in the first two months of 2022, compared to nearly $340 million in the first two months of 2020.