Polynesian Cultural Center reopening with limited capacity and activities as officials look ahead to tourism recovery

The Polynesian Cultural Center, a cornerstone of Laie and an economic magnet for the North Shore community, is set to reopen Monday following a 10-month-long closure — one of that last major attractions on Oahu to welcome back visitors after Hawaii tourism was shut down in March due to the corona­virus pandemic.

A full house is expected for the first day, center officials said, although under social-distancing limits that translates to only 260 guests compared to the 2,000-plus who visited on a daily basis before the outbreak.

Most other major attractions reopened last year after the state took steps to allow more tourists under quarantine and pre-arrival testing programs. With the encouraging release of COVID-19 vaccines, Polynesian Cultural Center President Alfred Grace said officials decided it was time to start up again after first closing March 16.

“We’re really excited to be blowing off the cobwebs and getting back to doing what we do best,” Grace said.

For PCC, which is owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and Hawaii’s other tourism-based operations, reopening amid the ongoing slump in tourism is a leap of faith. Even with the easing of some travel restrictions, visitor arrivals to the islands were down roughly 75% over the last two months of 2020 compared to 2019 totals, according to Hawaii Tourism Authority data.

With year-end holiday travelers come and gone, and with COVID-19 on a deadly rampage through the western states that comprise the bulk of the state’s tourism market, Hawaii arrivals are dropping again. Visitor industry observers say tourism isn’t likely to recover until the third or fourth quarter of 2021, if then.

“Everybody is just hanging on,” said Toni Marie Davis, executive director of the Activities &Attractions Association of Hawaii, which represents close to 200 members. She said attractions that have a strong local and military customer base are faring a little better than those that rely overwhelmingly on visitor traffic.

Small owner-operator businesses with low overhead also may be in a better position to survive, along with activities and attractions that can offer private tours and events.

“For larger attractions just to open their doors, the expenses are monumental,” Davis said. At the same time, evolving government rules are severely limiting capacity and revenue opportunities, while creating uncertainty among operators and visitors alike.

According to the State of Hawaii Data Book, the PCC entertained nearly 670,000 guests in 2019, its last full year of operation. About 80% were tourists.

With Monday’s “soft opening,” the cultural center’s new hours will start later in the day, at 4 p.m. The PCC will offer limited activities for 260 guests a day that include its most popular presentation, the Samoan Village, along with a new canoe excursion of its lagoon and other Polynesian-themed villages, and an extended format of the Ali‘i Lu‘au featuring “‘Onipa‘a, A Tribute to Queen Lili‘uokalani.”

The “HA: Breath of Life” evening show will be sold separately, and the adjoining Hukilau Marketplace will operate from noon through 7:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday.

In preparation for reopening, PCC installed a full complement of safety measures that include sanitizing stations, signage, Plexiglas displays and electrostatic sanitizer sprayers. Additionally, employees will undergo mandatory weekly COVID-19 testing.

“Social distancing has probably been the biggest struggle for us,” Grace said. “We have, for example, an evening show theater that seats 2,600, and with the 6-foot spacing we will be maxing out at 600.”

He said that before the COVID outbreak, the cultural center had never closed for more than three days at a time, so the extended downtime allowed a number of upgrades and maintenance projects to be undertaken, chief among them the draining and cleaning of the extensive lagoon for the first time in the PCC’s nearly 60-year history.

Other work included revamping and installing a new lighting system at the luau facility.

Prior to last year’s closure, PCC employed 1,400 part- and full-time workers, including those at the Hukilau Marketplace. Approximately 50% of the workforce is being brought back for the initial reopening phase, Grace said.

Many of the full-time staff chose to take a severance package and relocated to the mainland, and a sizable segment of PCC workers are students at neighboring Brigham Young University-Hawaii who returned home at the onset of COVID-19, he said.

“We don’t expect to have the same number of student employees at the center probably until the summer months, when we hope that things are back to a little nearer to normal in Hawaii,” Grace said.

John “Sione” Milford is thankful to have been kept on at PCC throughout the closure. A host and emcee for shows and special events, he was redeployed to help with upkeep and remodeling projects.

The 40-year-old Punaluu resident has been working off and on at the PCC since 1999, returning to a full-time position in 2013. His wife, Jenmaria, also worked at the center but remains furloughed. The couple have four children who danced at the center and at shows in Waikiki.

“At first I thought it would be just for two weeks,” Milford said. “But that turned into four weeks, then three months, six months … .”

He said that prior to the shutdown in March, he looked forward to a daily routine that started at 3 in the afternoon when he would engage throngs of visitors. Working during the closure was in eerie contrast to those times.

“I was still at the village and it would be 3, and it was kind of weird. It was completely silent and I’d be there by myself pulling weeds and thinking, ‘Yeah, this is crazy.’”

Milford said he is looking forward to once again interacting with guests and co-workers.

“I miss the excitement, the energy,” he said. “When you show up everybody is excited and happy to see me. There aren’t too many jobs where you show up to work and everyone is screaming, ‘Oh, Sione’s here!’”

As for whether his family and the PCC will be able to hang on until the crowds return in greater numbers, Milford said: “You’ve got to be optimistic that it will get better. We’re just excited; it’s been almost a year.”

To survive the extended closure, the nonprofit PCC relied on financial reserves and support from its parent church, according to Grace.

“We were able to build up our rainy day fund over the last few years, which was able to sustain us through most of last year, but we have been able to receive some additional funding,” he said. “We will need to look at how we are able to operate going forward and, if necessary, we might have to look to secure additional funding (from the church). But we are hoping we’ll be able to manage along through cost control, basically.”

Grace is under no illusion that tourism is on a fast track to return to the record-breaking levels of recent years, but is confident Hawaii remains a desirable destination.

“We know there’s a lot of pent-up demand. How it translates to actual bodies out here in Hawaii is another matter. But it’s good to know that people want to come back to Hawaii,” he said. “We know it will happen, we just don’t know when. Everything is subject to what happens in our main feeder markets on the mainland, particularly in California and the western states, which are really battling COVID. That’s obviously a concern to all of us here in Hawaii.

“We wish them well, but at the same time it’s probably a priority for them to cope with COVID before they start traveling en masse to Hawaii. We’re just hoping … the states do a great job in getting the vaccine out there, which I think will go a long way to help the tourism recovery in Hawaii.”

Since reopening Sept. 28, attendance at Oahu’s top visitor draw, the Pearl Harbor National Memorial, had been ticking upward, but since the holidays, “it’s now dipping back down until the spring break rush,” reported Hanako Wakatsuki, acting chief of interpretation.

Attendance at the National Park Service’s hallowed World War II site is nowhere near the 1.7 million visitors counted in 2019. Preliminary NPS data shows only 415,542 visitors in 2020, a decline of 76% from the previous year.

December attendance, which usually spikes because of the holidays and Dec. 7 observances, was 36,252 last year compared to 154,815 in 2019.

Visitors are able to check out the Pearl Harbor Visitor Center and museum, but the theater remains closed. Instead, the 23-minute documentary normally screened indoors is being shown on the outdoor lanai. Tours aboard U.S. Navy vessels to the USS Arizona Memorial are limited to 50 guests, a third of the usual capacity.

“We are living in unprecedented times and we are just kind of rolling with the flow,” Wakatsuki said.

The memorial has a staff of 37, and “it still takes the same amount of people to operate the park whether we have 1,000 people or 10,000 people,” she said.

In lieu of in-person events commemorating the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, the NPS turned to online programming last year. Remembrance activities included a virtual field trip for students and a series of “Beyond Pearl Harbor: Untold Stories of WWII” videos on some of the Park Service’s other wartime sites.

In total, the programs reached more than 300,000 people, according to Wakatsuki.

Seventeen miles north of the Pearl Harbor National Memorial, at Dole Plantation in Wahiawa, attendance for the first two months of 2020 was running about 5% ahead of the previous year but ended the year down 77%, according to Director of Operations Mike Moon, who did not provide guest totals.

The visitor attraction reopened Nov. 12 following the start of the state’s Safe Travels pre-arrival testing program in mid-October and loosening of the city’s coronavirus restrictions. Key features are a Pineapple Garden Maze, Pineapple Express train tour and a garden tour.

“While guest counts have been consistent and steady, the numbers are nowhere near what we had experienced before COVID,” Moon said via email. “We saw a slight bump over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, but again, it was nowhere close to the historical numbers we have seen during that same time period over the last decade.”

He noted that Dole Plantation attractions are mostly outdoors, “so while we are better positioned to operate our activities under the new guidelines, there are limitations to ridership and crowd control in the attractions. Occupancy is limited to 50% inside the store, and all indoor dining has been blocked off.”

Under its comprehensive hygiene and sanitation program, the plantation is open six days a week and closed on Wednesdays for deep cleaning.

Other Oahu attractions that are open, most with reduced hours and activities and all with strict anti-coronavirus measures in place, include the Honolulu Zoo in Waikiki, Wet’n’Wild water park in Kapolei, and Kualoa Ranch in Kaneohe, which requires visitors to present their Safe Traveler information.

Also open are Bishop Museum, the Honolulu Museum of Art, Diamond Head State Monument, Iolani Palace, and the other Pearl Harbor historic sites: USS Bowfin Submarine Museum, Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum and Battleship Missouri Memorial.

The Waikiki Aquarium is closed but is providing virtual experiences. Exhibits, shows and day visits at Sea Life Park are closed, but on Saturday it began offering limited-capacity Dolphin Encounters.