Flights to Hawaii
I just read a very interesting article from eTurboNews about China Eastern Airlines cancelling their flights between Hawaii and China. According to China Eastern Airline, the flights to Hawaii from Shanghai were cancelled in October due to low demand. China Eastern Airlines was supposed to re-launch their Hawaii flights in November and upgrade the route from a charter to a regular scheduled flight.
In retrospect, it now appears that the China market was not all that it was cracked up to be and this latest setback is a blow to the many years of effort by the Hawaii Tourism Authority (HTA) on developing this route. The Star Advertiser, Honolulu’s daily newspaper, stated that the HTA estimated that Chinese visitors would bring 60 million in Hawaii travel dollars on an annual basis.
The competing Hawaii-based private Hawaii Tourism Association (HiTA) had earlier warned about relying on China Eastern Airline as a provider of flights to Hawaii and expressed concerns over the state’s resources used to lobby for it. HiTa was also critical of the rival HTA’s efforts and cited China Eastern Airlines’ reputation for poor service and low reliability.
HiTA also criticized HTA’s previous efforts in trying to lure another China carrier, Hainan Airlines, to offer Hawaii flights several years ago saying that the state’s lobbying effort only resulted in the island of Hainan knowing how to better position their own location as a closer tropical alternative to Hawaii for Chinese tourists.
Such comments reminded me of my own business initiatives in China during the heydays of the 1990s as well as working for a Chinese company in the early 2000s. It always appeared to me that the Chinese were never really looking for a true win-win solution and were always astute enough to take advantage of Americans’ over-exuberance and impatience of trying to make a quick buck from the Chinese. In my opinion, the only winners then, as is now, are the Chinese.
