Honolulu Civil Beat:
When Keith Vieira, a long-time Hawaii tourism executive appeared on a panel at the East-West Center last week, he was glad to hear from a fellow panelist that the likelihood of Hawaii getting nuked by North Korea was zero.
In a market where 98 percent of visitors are leisure travelers, he said, any risk of a nuclear attack from Kim Jong Un could be bad news for the visitor industry.
“Even a 1 percent chance would easily stop the flow” of tourists to Hawaii, said Vieira, a former senior vice president of Starwood Hotels & Resorts. “You’re simply not going to travel to places where you’re concerned about safety, and if you’re an Asian traveler, it’s multiplied quite a lot.”
