“We know from recent experience, the anguish and damage that occur when Hawaii is not properly prepared with flexible pragmatic planning and execution”, says Dale Evans, CEO of Charley’s Taxi. Dale knows what she is talking about as a respected mover and shaker in the travel and tourism industry in Hawaii for decades.
She is one of 16 people in the world awarded the Safer Tourism Hero Award by Rebuilding.travel, a global group of travel and tourism professionals in 120 countries.
Dale Evans never took safety over profit running Charleys Taxi, the second-largest taxi company on Oahu, serving Waikiki, Honolulu, and the rest of the island of close to 1 million residents and visitors. Charley’s Taxi has been seen by many as the safest taxi company in the nation and made even UBER speechless. Today Dale Evans is frustrated and reached out to eTurboNews and Hawaii News Online.
Hawaii just reopened its travel and tourism industry, and Dale was one of the many businesses that had pushed for the reopening in a safe way.
When Dale received her award from heroes.travel she said: “In these incredibly difficult times for everyone and every sector of our economy, the travel industry must do its utmost to safeguard all aspects of the traveling experience. And of course, we need to demonstrate our commitment to safety to our customers. It is for that reason that we are honored to be recognized for our efforts with Resilience Travel’s Safer Tourism Seal.”
Tourist arrivals went from a low of 68 a day to 7,000+ after Hawaii allowed arrivals with a pre-COVID-19 test and no requirement of quarantine as of last week Thursday (October 15.) This increase is encouraging and suprising at the same time.
The real impact in regards to COVID-10 after the reopening of the Aloha State will not be seen until the beginning of November.
Now Dale is ringing the alarm bells in her home town Honolulu, saying tourists are coming back, but there is no plan B. Confronted by her drivers demanding answers she wrote this letter to political and industry leaders in Hawaii and is waiting for a response.
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Waikiki 10/18/20Dale Evans appeal to political leaders and authorities in Hawaii:
Missing from this relaunch is a PLAN B scenario, to have an Industry-wide organized Committee and Checklist that all government agencies, and private businesses, and workers to know what to do:
- to assist visitors when they get sick when the nature of the illness is yet unknown to be CV related’
- where to take them, urgent care, test place, etc?
- to report those instances to whom,
- to have a Contact Info list to avoid waits and too many phone calls
- to determine when and whether all the worker(s) in contact with those visitors must quarantine or not (if a visitor was not COVID-19 sickness-related so they can go back to work)
- to accommodate and assist the companions of sick visitors – do they all go into quarantine, when?
- companies’ responsibilities
To just say that the visitor must quarantine when the nature of the illness is undetermined — whether the visitor has contracted CV — ignores the importance to quickly identify the possible cases after arrival. Contacting the Department of Health is a frustrating process, a Committee or formalized Group needs to be set up to address a Plan B procedure.
- What else can be done to avoid future surge?
- At what point will our political leaders again shut down Hawaii’s #1 economic engine?
- Don’t wait and see! Prepare Now!
We know from recent experience, the anguish and damage that occur when Hawaii is not properly prepared with flexible pragmatic planning and execution!
eTurboNews had tried to ask this question to the Hawaii Tourism Authority, Governor Ige, and Lt. Governor Green, but there was nothing but silence.
