HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – Hawaii’s visitor industry is expressing alarm over the Trump administration’s latest effort to prevent dangerous people from entering the country.
Visitors may soon face vetting of their social media and family histories.
Visitors from many of Hawaii’s biggest international travel partners like Japan, Korea and Australia don’t need visas to come here but must apply for entry through the Electronic System for Travel Authorization, or ESTA.
Homeland Security wants to use ESTA to do more vetting of those visitors.
“The Trump administration might be trying to solve one problem, but it’s going to create a whole lot of other problems for the visitor industry, not only in Hawaii, but nationwide,” said James Tokioka, state business and tourism director.
Eric Takahata of Hawaii Tourism Japan said Japanese visitors highly value their privacy.
“I think as the marketing contractor for the state of Hawaii and Japan, I think this is going to have a huge negative impact on tourism,” he said.
Proposed requirements expand background checks
For visitors from favored countries like Japan, it currently takes only a few minutes and a $40 fee to be approved for a visit or business trip.
But Homeland Security and Customs and Border Enforcement are proposing that ESTA applicants provide five years of social media accounts and phone numbers, 10 years of email addresses, and names, birthdates, places, addresses and phone numbers of immediate family.
“Yeah, I mean, it’s highly invasive, it’s onerous,” said Mufi Hannemann president of the Hawaii Lodging and Tourism Association. “And I just don’t see, whether you’re a celebrity, a high profile person, or just a citizen or a business person that wants to come here, or if you want to go to school here, what have you. It’s going to make you think twice about wanting to do these things in the USA. Period.”
Trump was asked recently if he was concerned about the impact on tourism nationwide.
“No, we are doing so well. We just want people to come over here and (be) safe. We want safety. We want security. We want to make sure we are not letting the wrong people come into our country,” Trump said.
Hawaii officials plan to oppose proposal
The president will be hearing from the administration of Gov. Josh Green.
“The governor is very, very supportive of tourism and I know he’s not going to want anything like this to happen. And he’s going to do whatever he can to try to stop it,” Tokioka said.
Takahata said many Japanese visitors will be willing to provide the information, but many will not.
“They will view this as a huge invasion of their privacy. And so where we’ll see the effect of that is maybe up front, they might not say it up front, but you’re going to see it with the drop in bookings, you know, that’ll occur because of this,” he said.
Another part of the proposal would require all ESTA applications to be done with a mobile app, and will do away with the website application used by many who are not as comfortable with mobile apps.
Takahata said that would also discourage valued travelers, like retirees.
The vetting would also impact travelers from most of Europe.
The visitor industry nationwide is united against this proposal and hoping during a 90-day comment period the Trump administration will back off. Otherwise it takes effect on Feb. 8, 2026.
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