Japan Tourists Shun Hawaii as Quake Slows Golden Week Travel

[marmar]

(Bloomberg) Machiko Takemura, a housewife in Kawasaki City, near Tokyo, booked a Golden Week holiday to Hawaii on March 11, hours before an earthquake rocked Japan.

“When we saw the full effects of the disaster, we canceled it,” said Takemura, 30, who planned to visit the U.S. state with her husband and baby son during Golden Week, a run of four Japanese holidays in a week, beginning tomorrow. “The future seemed very uncertain.”

Japanese tourists, who account for about 20 percent of Hawaii’s visitors, have pared overseas trips since the magnitude-9 quake hitting bookings for Hilton Worldwide Inc. and Starwood Hotels & Resorts World Inc. and forcing Japan Airlines Co. and All Nippon Airways Co. to cut flights. Hawaii’s visitor numbers from Japan have slumped 28 percent this month, according to the state tourism agency.

“The pace of overall bookings slowed dramatically immediately after the earthquake,” said Dave Erdman, chief executive officer of PacRim Marketing Group Inc., which runs Japanese-language websites for Hawaii hotels. “We basically lost a full month of bookings.” ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-28/japan-tourists-shun-hawaii-as-golden-week-travel-falls-on-quake.html

[Poll_Blind]

1. After reading the whole article, the word "shun" is not only inappropirate, the tourism is...

...apparently rebounding much more quickly than after similar events in the past. I started reading the article presuming the Japanese were shunning Hawaii because of radiation fears (oh, the irony!) but doesn't seem like that at all. If anything, at least from reading the article, they're not shunning Hawaii, they're shunning the spending of extra money for travel at all.

PB