John De Fries took the reins of the Hawaii Tourism Authority (HTA) one month, almost to the day, before this week’s planned launch of a pretravel program that is crucial to the state’s tourism reboot.
“It’s a vertical learning curve,” De Fries said. “Not only for me, frankly, but for the entire industry.”
The program, which would enable visitors to bypass a strict 14-day quarantine if they test negative for