 We are getting journey up to apologize for this picture. I don't know what's going on or is it just do I need new glasses or is this as fuzzy as it gets? Goodness, I hope that's not the case. However, we are going to navigate the journey, of course, even with fuzzy pictures. Today, our journey is around the world. And we are going to talk to, of course, a dear friend. I know I only talked to dear friends, Jordan Thomas or Thomas Jordan, whatever way we want. But he's such a dear friend. And Thomas has international radio, television, newspaper, and he does tourism around the world. So we I asked him to talk to us today about the impact of the coronavirus around the world. It is not just Hawaii. And we see, of course, no tourism, which means our economy just goes. And that is what is happening in Texas Hall or the middle of Africa and needless to say Rome and all of those and China, all of those big tourist spots. And so, you know, it's not just us. It's everywhere. So, Jordan, there you are. Good to have you even fuzzy. You really look good. Oh, you're so sweet. What's going on with this? But, unless we're here. Okay. Oh, I disappeared. Wow. Okay, let's talk to you. Let's focus on you. Tell us about Jordan. Jordan is your first name or last night? Yes. No, no, Jordan is my first name. My middle name is Thomas. And most people know me under Thomas, at least those that know me for a long time like you. And my last name is Stein mitz. So it's a good long German name. But I lived in Hawaii actually since 1988. I've been here for a while, more than half of my life. And this doesn't make me a Hawaiian. I know that, but it's my home. And we're all concerned about our home and those that live with us on this island, of course. Now, tell us about what you do. You do lots and lots of things. But your travel station, travel tourism, newspaper, internet, newspaper, online, webinars, all kinds of things around the world. Well, my company, I was the one who founded the company back in 1999. And that made us actually the first online media for the travel and tourism industry. When we first started, my company was a destination management organization and we represented Indonesia and the United States. And when the United States had travel warnings against Indonesia, we were trying to find an inexpensive way to address travel professionals, specifically in the United States. We teamed up with two operators and travel companies in Indonesia with the government and started sending out electronic newsletter in a Yahoo group format. You may remember this. This was back in 2000. Unfortunately, the representation for Indonesia ended in 2001 mostly because of corruption issues. We couldn't get paid. But we continued under the name we had established at the time, Etobo News. We got the name actually from a sponsor, an Etobo hotel company in Singapore. Singapore was the first Expedia type online booking agent and they handled most of the hotels in Indonesia at the time. And they were our sponsor when the government couldn't pay us. Regardless, since 2001, we ventured away from Indonesia and kind of built a global database of followers in the travel and tourism industry. And I think today without bragging, we can say we're probably one of the leading, at least the oldest company in the world that reports constantly about travel and tourism issues. We have a team of 200 some freelance journalists in every part of the world. We publish every hour, 24 hours a day, so we're very timely. Our news is usually not about beautiful swimming pool and beaches. We're going more in the political part. And we publish currently, besides Etobo News, our flagship publication. We have 16 other publications, including two editions that are not published here, but in Germany and in the German language. And we're partnering with 70 some travel industry events all over the world. And because we're so old and so ancient in the time, we're doing a lot more now than just reporting about travel and tourism issues. In the Travel News Group, what is our roof organization, besides our publication, we run Safer Tourism. Safer Tourism is a partnership with Dr. Peter Tarlow, who is probably one of the best known experts in the world in regards to travel, security and safety. He actually has done part of the tourism sensitivity training also here in Hawaii of HPD. He spoke at the HTA events, marketing events at the convention center several times and had also his own evenings and followership here in Hawaii, an event sponsored by Sheraton at the time, by Hala Kulani and several others in the business. But mostly Peter and I, we work on a global scale. Right now, Peter is in charge of the relaunch tourism relaunch for Jamaica. And we work in training a federal tourism police force in Mexico. We're also very much involved in tourism security and sensitivity in Africa. We help with the Ebola crisis. And Peter is also, teaches also at the medical college in College Station, Texas. That's where he lives at the university there. Medicine and the connection between medicine and tourism. So obviously, with this very dangerous situation now unfolding everywhere in the world, we kind of sucked in right into the middle of this epidemic when it comes to reaching out to people or actually people reaching out to us. So currently, we work with the World Travel and Tourism Council, what is an organization based in London. And the 200 largest tourism companies are their members in Hawaii. Outrigger is a member and one of the major sponsors is Marriott. Actually, Mr. Marriott Jr. is on the board. So we work with them on the COVID Task Force. We work with the African Tourism Board on their COVID response. We have a conference called every Tuesday at 5 a.m. in the morning, Hawaii time. And we have 17 Ministers of Tourism joining us on this call. We're bracing Africa for what is most likely coming their way. And it hasn't really hit Africa in a completely bad way as of yet. We also work with the Vanilla Island Tourism people in the Indian Ocean. Very similar situation to Hawaii, island nations, island states. Rayon Yon could probably be a sister island for Oahu. It's part of France. It's a territory of France. It's not just an overseas colony. It's part of France. So it has direct air links with Paris, what's 11 hours away. And there's a lot I think we can learn from a destination like Rayon Yon because they did close their tourism arrivals completely to their island state. What we haven't done yet here in Hawaii. Their numbers are relatively low, but there are coronavirus is present there. And I think I could go on for like an hour more just to tell you where we're involved in. We're involved in a lot of different things. And yes, we also do webinars. We have our own two weekly shows like yours. They are broadcast around the world and on our publications. And we recently teamed up with Buzz.Travel, B-U-Z-Z.Travel. It's a new social media network similar to LinkedIn and Facebook, but only for travel and tourism. It's free to join. So anyone who wants to test it or try it, just feel free to join us. This exactly what's going on in different parts of the world. You mentioned Africa. Now, looking at the world map, not the world map, but the World Health Organization's map, North Africa that is along the Mediterranean, North Africa, the Arab states, and then South Africa are on wits on the map. But the heart of Africa is due to be yet infected with the virus. So tell me about those middle states, those 50 states in the middle, and where they are or are they infected with the virus? Well, obviously, I don't have a server play to respond to this. This is the problem in Africa. The epic center of the virus is in Europe and in New York at this time. That's where you find most of the cases. But also Europe and New York and the rest of the United States. We have the money and we have the resources to do the testing. Without testing, we wouldn't know how bad or how good or how dangerous this virus is. We would probably never be able to stop the epidemic because we cannot test and don't have intelligence about it. So if you look at Africa as a whole, Africa doesn't, for the most part, have not even close to the resources we have here in the United States and the resources that are available in Europe. So the numbers you see from Africa are numbers are mostly the critical numbers. Those people that get sick, that need treatment, not those that are really not sick in a way that they need treatment because they don't know for the most part if they're infected. Now there are certain parts in Africa that are more advanced. In North Africa, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco might be more advanced. In the central part of Africa, it's probably the third world and it's probably the worst area on the globe when it comes to medical resources. So I wouldn't trust these numbers at all. A very good friend of mine is the Minister of Tourism from Sierra Leone who has been working tirelessly in trying to keep this virus out of her country and now this is in the center of Africa and she now reports seven cases. But the seven cases are only the tip of the iceberg. I know friends I talked to in Zimbabwe several times a week and I said they see people carried away constantly around the clock. But Zimbabwe I think only reports 14 cases of the virus. So the numbers are only as good as countries are really reporting it. South Africa may be an exception. South Africa is a first world country. They have good resources when it comes to medical care and the numbers are more trustworthy. Altogether, Africa from the numbers is not really such a big concern. But A, we only know the numbers that are reported. And B, if you look at the same situation in North America or Europe and the history, it all started very small. When I left for Europe on February 27th to attend the ITB trade show in Berlin and this show was cancelled after I already left Hawaii. We only had, we literally had no cases of the virus in the US but there were six cases in Germany and everyone was going crazy about this and most people laughed about it and said why would we cancel trade shows and event for just six people sick. Now today you're looking at more than 100,000 people sick. Many people died and this is the same in New York. People have not really understood how dangerous this virus is. There are still people out there that say it's just like the flu. It's definitely not like the flu, it's way more contagious and we cannot get rid of it and people are dying if we don't stay home, if we don't stay away, if we don't stop tourism, I don't know what will happen next specifically on an island, in an island state like ours. We have a chance to isolate ourselves. If you look at nine different other island countries in the Pacific like Palau, like Niuwi, like the Cook Islands, there are no cases of coronavirus and I believe these numbers. Now if you look at Guam, you look at Hawaii, you look at island states that are considered first world, you find an increasing number of these cases and that is because we're open to the outside world but we have a chance to lock ourselves in there and I think this needs to happen. We just did an article just about two hours ago again pointing out that every mayor in the state urged Governor E. Gates to contact President Trump and asked for a tourism to put a stop to tourism and to non-essential arrival in the state. The governor had not responded to it. You cannot just wait till these numbers go way more than 435 I guess what they are today in the state and this is the same with Africa. It is small but Africa is so much more in danger because the medical resources, once it really hits, are not there to treat people and people will die and unfortunately people will die in big numbers more than what we see even in our own country in New York or what we see in Rome or what we see in France. Interesting enough, if I can add this, I followed the situation in Europe obviously being from Germany having a lot of family and Germany having my sister being the assistant of the mayor in Düsseldorf, what is the capital city of the state infected by this virus? You get a lot of information you sometimes may not get and if you look the approach Germany with so many people infected has compared to the number of deaths Germany has compared to Spain, Italy or France for example the death rate in Germany is extremely low. Why is this? Because the country from the medical point was on top of it. Not like Germany contained people when they should have contained it they made the same mistake but the medical system is there the equipment is there for the most part so far Germany has been able to handle it if Germany would still be able to do this if numbers go up even more we don't know there are some positive signs same as in New York that the percentage of infections you have to always look at percentages not really at numbers because numbers say nothing you have to see the percentage of population and there are some encouraging numbers in Italy there are encouraging numbers in many parts of Europe now that the percentage of the infections are slowly going down that means isolation and social distancing seems to be working. It doesn't mean we can all start going out and doing what we wanted to do and we don't know when this would happen and tourism unfortunately will probably be the last in line to get back on its feet and that is very bad news for our state and I don't know how we're going to prepare ourselves for this but it is a concern specifically for countries and regions that are dependent on the tourism industry you know Marcia I said for many many years 20, 30 years tourism is everyone's business in this state I don't think anyone ever wanted to listen to me but we have said it over and over again even if you're not involved in the tourism industry it's our industry in the state no matter what you do and now we see the danger has put us in all of these small businesses depend on tourism restaurants, the movie theaters everything depends on tourism and when you don't have new people coming then it all falls apart tell us speaking of what about the old Asians around but not down into India of course but Sierra Leone those places right at as you go down from China those small countries how are they doing? Yeah, the Sierra Leone is in West Africa just for you know and actually Sierra Leone is known for the Hawaii of Africa because it has beautiful beaches like we do but when you go to East Asia of course China, Hong Kong if you look at Singapore, if you look at Indonesia if you look at the Philippines the virus is everywhere and it's threatening every economy whether it's in Asia, whether it's in Europe whether it's in Africa or South America these days and the situation in Asia I think it almost appears when we hear the news when we hear where the world is talking about it's in the process of leaving Asia so it's not the epic center anymore even though the epic center started in China in a province in China but it's no longer there now when you really look at the number of people infected during the entire crisis ever since the virus was started we were all talking about China in this one province and what it did to China if you look at the numbers today and compare the numbers with any country in Europe for example it is three or four times as many people sick as there were in China in percentage of the population China has more than a billion people and if you actually look at it the most affected country in the world right now for this virus is a little tiny country it's called San Marino it's in the northern surrounded by Italy close to Rimini that's where the epic center is and was in Italy when it's all started this country has twenty times more people infected based on population percentage than Italy now the United States because of wide open regions like Kansas like Missouri, like Nebraska where the virus hasn't hit the same way it hit in New York in dense populated areas our number is quite low we're only about ten percent percentage wise what Germany for instance is doing and where other people stand but you cannot see it like this either because it looks like the virus is most dangerous in populated areas and I think if regions like in Texas or regions in Nebraska or Kansas managed to stop movement they can be in a lot better shape of course than New York or the East Coast or unfortunately the West Coast major cities like San Francisco or Los Angeles Seattle may ever been in so it is there are a lot of factors that come together when it comes to this virus and talking about Africa the central part of Africa is desert yes and they may be able to keep it under control better than major cities with millions of people like Lagos in Nigeria for example like Accra in Ghana like Nairobi in Kenya Dar es Salaam in Tanzania or Kampala in Uganda Johannesburg or Cape Town many of the other million people cities some of them we don't even know here the danger is density the danger is mingling having people around the only way to really keep this virus under control is distancing and it is hard because we as people we are not people who want to distance we want to have a cup of coffee with someone we wanted to have lunch together and we want to go on vacation to enjoy a vacation together and see how long this will take I think it would all depend on how our behavior is and not only our local behavior but global behavior in this case Well, Jorgen now tell me speaking of islands the Caribbean what about those islands I forgot to mention I am actually a member of the Tourism Resilience Board it is based in Jamaica it was started by the government of Jamaica by Edmund Bartlett who is the Minister of Tourism and a very good friend now and the Resilience Center is now spread out throughout the Caribbean but also to places like Nepal Japan Bangkok and so forth the numbers in the Caribbean are relatively low compared to the numbers in many other parts of the world the Caribbean except for some exceptions like Havana for instance in Cuba or very few places have really very dense areas do you have a metropolitan area like you have Honolulu but even a city like Honolulu with our size is hardly found anywhere in the Caribbean so for the most part the numbers in the Caribbean are under control the islands without exceptions are now quarantined and people cannot leave and but then again all the numbers started slow I had an interesting case actually a guy from Germany whose mother is a good friend from my sister on the sailing boat around the world he left Germany almost a year ago and when the virus hit he was in Grenada and his family, his two kids and his wife flew to Grenada this was all before this virus broke out and they're currently locked on their sailing boat in the harbor on the island of Grenada and he's only allowed to go to a small tiny grocery store once a week that's a lot of people from all over the world and it hits the travel and tourism industry just also recently two or three days ago another good friend of mine her name is François Kemala she used to be the minister of tourism for Cameroon and she came to ITB Berlin like I did and ITB Berlin the largest trade event was cancelled just two days before we met briefly in Berlin in New York to do some work for her embassy in New York assigned to the United Nations and she was supposed to be in New York for four days and when she was ready to get back to Cameroon all the flights were cancelled there was no more flight to get her anywhere even close to Cameroon so she desperately trying to get back to her kids and her family in Cameroon had waited for more than two weeks to be able to be the United Airlines flight to Frankfurt and on a connecting flight to Paris where she wanted to wait for a rescue flight the Cameroon government had put together on April 17th when she left on United United left her board and when she arrived in Frankfurt to change to Paris she was not admitted into Germany even though she had a valid visa she had a valid US visa and she was stranded in the transit hall at Frankfurt Airport and finally her foreign ministry in Cameroon intervened with authorities and with the help of the US consulate in Frankfurt she was able to be deported and get back on the flight in Newark and that's where she started out and now is stranded in Newark again there's so many little stories you know you hear and it's incredible we are out of time but of course I can always listen to your stories from around the world and I thank you for taking this time with us and telling all these wonderful stories and connecting the world for us and you will come back and hopefully we can figure out why this is so fuzzy but again thank you thank you so much it's always a pleasure it's a pleasure being on your show thank you Marcia and we'll see you next time