 Welcome and Aloha. I'm Mark Shklav, host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea program. I love to travel across the sea, especially to meet friends at professional legal conferences. Making those in-person professional contacts has been very meaningful and helpful to me and my clients in my law practice. However, because of this pandemic we've all been going through, I have had to cancel plans to attend legal conferences in Shanghai and Tokyo. My question, when and how are we going to be able to safely travel across the seas again? My guest is Wendy Goodenow. Wendy is the president of H&L Travel Associates and is a certified travel counselor. For many years, Wendy has been helping her clients realize their dreams of travel and adventure around the world. I've asked Wendy to share her knowledge and help us learn to navigate across the seas again. Welcome, Wendy. It's good to see you. We have on the screen right now something from your H&L Travel website where you say, let me read this. Even in an uncertain world, we believe in the allure of travel. It's still okay to dream. Travel provides the joy of dreaming, the excitement of the experience and a lifetime of priceless memories. Now, Wendy, hello, how are you? Thanks, Mark. Appreciate having that postcard there. That was actually something we sent to our clients about four months into this pandemic. Just to let them know we're not giving up. Well, I like the philosophy expressed there. And what is the basis for your philosophy about travel that it provides the joy of dreaming and the excitement of the experience? How did you come to that? Well, you know, I grew up in this business with my mother and she instilled in me the desire to learn and absolutely everything you do traveling is a learning experience. So it opens your eyes to everything. You see how other people live. You should not go to some country and expect the Hilton around the corner or the McDonald's down the block. You need to experience the local style. Learn about people and learn and maybe make some friends if possible, I guess, in these countries. And that may help bring us all together, perhaps. And I guess that's what I got out of what you were saying. And I really appreciate that. That's been true in my experiences with travel. Now, we've been going through this pandemic, this COVID-19 pandemic for over a year. What is the current status of the travel industry after we've gone through all these shutdowns and travel restrictions? Where are we now? What's happening in the travel industry, Wendy? Well, as soon as I tell you something, it's gonna change. I must get 50 to 100 emails every single day from a vendor, a tourism board, a friend telling us about the latest, sometimes not greatest news. And of course, the minute I say one thing, it's gonna change. I had that experience with a client personally last week. And it's a real challenge. However, with the vaccinations and things, we've opened up the world of thinking about travel. Now comes the get out of our shell and really decide something out there, maybe down the road is appropriate. But a lot of the people I'm talking to now, they wanna go tomorrow and they wanna know yesterday it was okay. Okay, well, let's talk about today. And what are the current rules for traveling into and out of Hawaii? I mean, what right today? Traveling out of Hawaii, there really isn't a rule. We don't need to do anything to leave Hawaii. Residents have just been given a great reprieve if you've gotten your vaccine here as of June 15th, you no longer have to take the COVID test on the return. You do have to upload your vaccine card as well as carry it with you because if they don't verify it before you arrive, you'll have to show it to the authorities at the airport. And we just had up on the screen a document and that comes from your firm, from H&L Travel. What was that? Mark, I took a trip with my husband to the Pacific Northwest last month. And in the process of doing my own safe travels, we turned home because it was before June 15th. I kept trying to figure out which comes first, the force of the cart. So I literally wrote down every single step that I went through in the process because I was leaving my husband up there and he would have to do his own coming home a week later. So he had no concept of what to do or how to do it. So I literally put it step by step. Now, just this week, I've added the white resident portion, but it's still a challenge getting that uploaded. And when you upload it, they have to verify it to actually get you through the process. So yeah, so you tried to prepare a step by step way on how to travel. How to do the Safe Travels Hawaii program. Okay, well, all right, what is Safe Travels Hawaii? What is that about? Safe Travels Hawaii is a program that the state has created that every time someone travels into Hawaii, they have to go online and fill it, go through the process, give them all your flight information, and then within 24 hours of your flight, you then have to go in and either upload your COVID test or upload your vaccine card, answer the health questionnaires, make sure everything works to get your QR code that gets you through the doors, so to speak, once you arrive to avoid quarantine. And so that's for folks coming into Hawaii. Correct. And this documentation that you prepared, you prepared that for your clients also? I give it to anybody and everybody that I think is even thinking about traveling. Okay, so how would somebody that's thinking of traveling, how would they get that from you, or how would they find out that step-by-step process that you prepared? I have it on emailable documents. I don't have it on my website as yet. That's a little more technical. I think it's going on to my Facebook. Okay, so people can, if they go on H&L Traveler, they could at least find out how to find that information. It's not top secret. It's on, if you just Google Safe Travels Hawaii, you will find sort of the same information. It's not quite as technical or detailed as I put it for my husband to understand. I like that step-by-step process. In the Safe Travels, they also talk about trusted partners. What is that? There is a list of trusted partners being where you can go to get a COVID test that they will accept. There's a lot of Walgreens, CVS. Actually, there are a couple of airlines that have set up their own program for testing. Hawaiian in fact has their own test site. And if you go onto their website once you're ticketed, you can put in the city you're coming home from and it'll tell you exactly where to go. You can make an appointment. It's very simple. Okay. I noticed that a lot of these rules seem to require a computer competence. And what if you're not computer competent? What do you do? I mean, do you have to just stay home? Call your grandkids or your kids. Get help. You need to be on the computer. It needs to be done on the computer. And it's really a lot easier if you physically do it on a desktop type computer. It's not as easy, especially on a phone, but once you've completed it, you can pull it up on your phone and it's all there, very easy to read. I see. So yeah, I mean, I'm just looking for ways to get us back traveling. Now you mentioned that you and your husband recently traveled to the mainland. I know that you did both business and fun. What was that experience like compared to prior to the COVID? The pre-COVID? Well, besides the mask and sanitizing and, you know, we were kids, our parents used to always tell us, wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands. That's no different today. You need to be doing that more often than not. A lot of people carry sanitizer, the airlines when you get on the flight, they'll hand you a little handy white so you can double check your seat area. They're very cognizant. I tell people, take three or four or even five masks with you on the flight because what I do is I change the mask every hour or two because it has pressure points on your face. But if you change the mask, the pressure points are different. Some masks are easier to breathe with. I do know now you always need to carry some kind of paper mask. There are airlines that will not accept cloth masks now. Okay, that's interesting. Good to know. In fact, Lufthansa in Frankfurt in their lounge will only allow you in with an M95 mask. Wow. Yeah. You have to check in advance a lot of these things and in a way just keep your area around you clean and keep yourself free from getting contamination, I guess. It's the best way. Yeah. Now, I've noticed from reading the newspaper that there seems to be a lot of rapid upsurge of travel into Hawaii at this time, but I mean, and after there seems to be a lot of rules about coming into Hawaii, and you've showed them to us and talked about them, but why do you think Hawaii is so popular now? Now, even with all these rules, the safe travel rules. Well, I think people love Hawaii anyway. People have waited a year and a half to come back and with the governor allowing no mask out in public, that tends to get approval from a lot of people that I still wear my mask when I'm out and about because I'm protected, I'm vaccinated, but I don't know about anybody else. So it sounds there's two factors here. One is that there's a perception that Hawaii is a safe place to travel and people like to come to Hawaii. Well, we have had a constant low count. I don't know if anybody really realizes it, but we have been one of the better states in terms of being extra careful, although our governor and lieutenant governor are often criticized about being too strict, I'd rather be on the safe side for a shorter period of time and having to prolong it because we aren't being careful. So Hawaii seems to be popular for those reasons. What other venues or locations or travel destinations are most popular right now at this period in time today? Well, I can tell you there's a number of countries that have opened up already. The Caribbean is open, but you have to be basically vaccinated to get through the things you need to do there. Depending on where you're going and you always, always, always have to go online and look at travel.hawaii.gov to see Cummings and Goings for Hawaii as well as travel.state.gov for international travel. Well, based on the international travel, I mean, where are your clients wanting to go? Where have they, I mean? I know a lot of people want to go to Japan. I mean, I had to cancel a conference there, a lot of friends there. You know, kind of like Canada, they're more controlling of the tourists there. So right now you can't go to Canada, you can't go to Japan, you just gotta wait. I hate to say that, but everybody has their own rules. And that's why I say you have to go online almost every day to see where each country is at. It's just absolutely amazing. And when your clients, is that what they're contacting you about mostly is where can I go? I mean, we talk about dreaming of traveling again, but they want to be safe, right? And so is that what you were finding, people are contacting you about is how can I be safe traveling? Well, a little bit of that, but more so they have in their mind, they want to go somewhere and maybe it's this year, maybe it's next year, but they want to know yesterday it's okay. So for the travel advisors, it puts a lot of strain on wanting quick answers because everything changes daily. And as soon as I get these rules down and I understand them, they change them. So we really, and from day one, I have never pushed people to want and book something. I just think people have to be very comfortable in what they're doing. They have to be comfortable knowing that they've taken all the precautions that they need to take. And it's partly my job to share some of that importance on keeping safe and well in the meantime. So really what you're talking about doing is providing knowledge and information really on a daily basis for people and you can't predict the future, can you? I mean, my wife and I would love to be able to travel we're travel dreamers when we, even on professional trips where we go to a convention or I go to a law convention, but we'll take a day or so and go like, when we go to Japan and go to Kyoto, even though I've been there many times, I still love to go there or some other location within Japan. But obviously we're not doing it now. I mean, even the, it's questionable about the Olympics. If they're gonna, I'm sorry, yeah. I mean, it's just, how are we gonna, when are, I mean, is there any, what advice would you give us? I mean, when are we gonna know? We just have to wait. Is that, I guess that's the advice. You just have to wait and see. It's really a hurry up and wait game because although we recommend that you start booking travel to some degree, it changes all along the way. I mean, air flight schedule changes. You know, we go through the normal daylight savings time on and off scheduled changes, but all these airlines are now having to bring more and more planes on. So their schedules are changing. And it's pretty much supply and demand as to where they're gonna add on flights first. So you're providing information basically on a daily basis to your clients, but you know, when you talk about the airlines, one thing we've heard a lot about the airlines is, you know, fights, you know, what's going on with that? And what's being done about that? I mean, do I have to, Matt, is that another worry when you get on a flight somewhere that there's gonna be a passenger, unruly passenger and a fighter, somebody trying to break into a cockpit? What's all that about? That's a lot of pandemic pent up, anger and angst and unaware of anxiety that people have, you know, Mark, if I knew I was gonna get hit by a truck, if I crossed the street, I wouldn't cross the street, but then I'd never go anywhere, you know? I can get hit at home just as easily as anywhere else in the world. So there is some risk, no matter what, is what you're saying. There's always gonna be risk. I mean, look at what's going on anywhere in the world. It's just tragic as to how people have taken things in their own hands because of their angst. Are there any destinations in the world today where people can travel to help reduce their stress? I mean, is there a place where we could just go and not have to worry? You see some advertisements on TV, but I don't necessarily buy into that, but do you have some suggestions or some thoughts? Well, first of all, you can go out or island without any testing issues and you don't have to do the safe travel program in your island anymore. That's a big help. I went yesterday to the North Shore of our own island and rode horses and I can't tell you how restful that was. And so out of my, I mean, this is my office, this is my element, five, six days a week. And just to drive for an hour and get on a horse, it was like heaven. You know, I like that. That's good advice. I mean, Hawaii, hey, this is the place. This is not a bad place to relax. My husband is hesitant now about international travel. He wants to see the US, he wants to see America and how many people ever think about that? You know, our own country. And it's got fascinating views and places to go and people to see that live a very different lifestyle than we do. So I think that's fabulous. Yeah, so look inward maybe in a way, travel within our own home country and islands. Yeah, yeah. And as we are looking towards the future now, post-pandemic, what are you suggesting for travel advice, for safe travel? I personally can't wait to get on a ship. You can put me out over the horizon and I'd be happy as a clam. But that's sort of a test case. We have to go through for a few weeks to see how well that works. We've been assured by the cruise lines that they're doing anything and everything possible to make it a safe destination because a lot of times your ship becomes your destination. When you're on a ship with 4,000 of your closest friends, that's a destination. Yeah, there's been a lot of cruising. It's the best way to travel. You unpack once. They've resanitized all the ships. They've done so much and they've gotten so much scientific information about cruising that I truly feel that that's probably a very safe place to be. Ah, so that's interesting because the cruises got a lot of criticism for the spread of COVID within the ships. That could have been anywhere. That could have been on a train. That could have been on a airplane. It could have been anything. Okay, now, so cruises you think are learning to change and be safe. They have been on the water, but not sailing for over 16 months now. And in the process, they've had their own scientific panels of advisors to be sure that they're doing what's right for their clients. I'm afraid it's just gonna take one more incident and it'll shut them down again. Well, that's good to know. I mean, I like to go on cruises too, but just there's been some worry and concern. We have a little bit of time left, but how about hotels? Or if we wanna stay somewhere? Little by little. They may be open, but maybe they don't have all their rooms available. There were some hotels that shut down to do major renovations, which was really smart because now that things are coming back, they open up and they're top of the mark. So if somebody wants to travel, they can contact you and get some advice on cruises, hotels, travel locations. And you wanna help them with information. You're not pushing anybody. Yeah. I can't push people to go out and do something immediately, but I can understand their fears and work with them to make it a win-win. And we just put on your contact information on the screen. So there we go. There's your H&L travel information that folks wanna contact you and maybe realize their dreams of travel again and find some adventure. They can contact you. Well, Wendy, I wanna thank you very much for being my guest today. I mean, I wanna travel. And in the legal profession, I gotta tell you just traveling is not, it is beneficial to everybody. In my personal experience, I've been doing it for 40 plus years and I just find the benefits from it are great, especially in Hawaii, which we're right in the middle of every place and close to Asia, close to the United States, mainland. And so it's meaningful to me. I wanna get back on it. So thank you for sharing your knowledge and hopefully our dreams will come true. Aloha. Aloha. Thank you, Mark.