Historically, China has imposed strong restrictions on tourism to the US. However, in December, China and the US reached a historic agreement that allows Chinese Travel companies to directly market tours to the US. The June 25, 2008 Honolulu Advertiser reports that the very first organized tour groups from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong are arriving in Hawaii this week.
I like the way this article describes these visitors as the “first wave.” It’s probably a very accurate description. China will have a huge impact on Hawaii tourism. It will begin slowly, just as Japanese tourism did, but will grow very rapidly.
DBEDT is expecting 85,000 visitors from China in 2008, and projects 130,000 in 2009. If that trend continues it won’t be long before Chinese tourists are making a huge impact on Hawaii – and Hawaiian Real Estate. Add to this good news that the Korean Government has also made travel to Hawaii easier and we should start seeing an impact in real estate sales in the next year or so.
In the past, we’ve seen that an increase in tourism from a country often precedes a large increase in property investment – it happened with Japan, and we can expect that this will happen with China.
July 18th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
Tourism is our top industry here in Hawaii. We’ve seen what happened with real estate here when the Japanese started visiting and I am confident that we’ll see the same thing when more Chinese and Korean visitors start coming here also. One reason why Hawaii has such a unique real estate marketplace is because Hawaii has such a great appeal to international investors and second home owners. This helps insulate Hawaii from other real estate markets across the U.S.
March 13th, 2009 at 4:55 am
I am from China and personally know many people who are very interested in investing in Hawaii properties however visa is a big issue for most Chinese. I’m even helping a RA marketing his listings among Chinese. Perhaps just my wishful thinking: if the U.S. government can make it easier for property investors to get a legal visa here, it will definitely help the real estate market.