Photo: Courtesy of Hawaiian Airlines

With Hawaii's peak tourism season approaching, the market for flights from China to the tropical island state in the US is heating up.

It's been more than two years since Hawaiian Airlines started its thrice weekly route from Beijing to Hawaii's capital of Honolulu on April 16, 2014. The airline has vowed to enhance its marketing and cabin amenities to attract more customers in the second largest aviation market after the US. 

Hawaiian has flown about 100,000 passengers on more than 600 flights on its route to China over the past two years, the airline said. In 2014-15, its non-stop flights added 7 percent more seats on its flights to and from China.

Visitor arrival numbers from Hawaii Tourism Authority suggest the airline's route from Beijing to Honolulu has contributed significantly to the sharp rise in Chinese tourists traveling to Hawaii.

The number of travelers from China to Hawaii jumped by 29.1 percent in 2014 and 12.4 percent in 2015, Liwei Kimura, regional director and chief representative for Greater China at Hawaiian Airlines, told the Global Times in an interview on Tuesday.

Since Air China and Hawaiian Airlines opened direct flights from Beijing to Hawaii in 2014, there have been six direct routes from Beijing weekly. China Eastern Airlines also operates seven direct flights a week from Shanghai. The total seats could reach about 3,400 per week.

In addition, Chinese passengers can also reach Hawaii via Seoul, South Korea on Korean Air or Asiana Airlines, or by transferring in Tokyo on Japan Airlines or All Nippon Airways.

Tailor-made market

Kimura is proud of the services that Hawaiian designed for its Chinese passengers. In one, the airline allows passengers to carry two pieces of luggage of up to 23 kilograms each. After arriving at the Honolulu, each Chinese passenger will also receive the exclusive perk of a free round-trip ticket to any of the Hawaiian islands.

The airline has contributed about $100 million to the local economy, and Chinese tourists have been the main driving force behind it, Kimura said.

Figures from Hawaii's tourism agency also show that more travelers visited the islands from the US mainland, Australia and China due to the increase in direct flights from these places.

In the first two months of 2016, the number of daily Chinese visitors to Hawaii grew 2.2 percent year-on-year to 4,098, the Hawaii Tourism Authority said. The total number of seats on commercial flights from China rose 19.3 percent as a result of more seats out of Beijing and Shanghai.

In 2015, the number of passengers flying from China to Hawaii grew 12.4 percent to nearly 180,000, and each person stayed on the island for an average of 6.29 days.

Although the US dominates the state's market for airline passengers, followed by Japan, other countries such as China and Australia are taking growing shares of the market, said Avi Mannis, senior vice president of Hawaiian Airlines' marketing department. "

China is a market with the biggest potential to be the largest market after the US," Mannis told the Global Times on Tuesday.

The income from international flights has increased from 8 percent in 2009 to 22 percent in 2015, and it has some guidance for the company's long-term strategies. "With the growth of international routes and the expansion of the global network, there are changes in terms of international flights' income," Kimura said.

Market education

However, amid the competition, the company said educating the market is its long-term mission.

In the first year after Hawaiian started flying to China, it discovered that Chinese passengers did not know much about Hawaii, Kimura said.

So, the airline begun putting a lot more effort into educating its Chinese customers through channels including traditional media, social media and advertisements.

The airline's online promotional videos have received more than 400,000 views on social media since January.

The company has also invited thousands of users of Mafengwo, one of China's top online travel communities, to follow well-known Chinese travelers on their trips to Hawaii.

In the future, the airline plans to launch more tailor-made packages for its Chinese customers.

For example, it plans to collaborate with some of Hawaii's high-end hotels to target business class clients, Kimura said.

"We have finished the process from zero to one, and now we are marching from one to ten, and it requires us to be more sensitive to changes in the market," Kimura noted.
Newspaper headline: Saying Aloha to China