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Cool Stuff: Bleisure tourism — will cruise ships come back?

The Norwegian Cruise Line's Pride of America

Honolulu, HAWAII — The $450 million dollar US flagship, Pride of America, is reminiscent of vessels that awed Cool Stuff as they majestically glided into Pago Pago Harbor.

Are cruise ships a part of the territory's future or are they soon to be extinct dinosaurs?  Did the industry, as a whole, contain Covid-19 properly, appropriately caring for their passengers, crews, and the destination ports?  

Do the territory's residents and government view the cruise ships incoming revenues worth the health risks in our new pandemic reality?

A positive tourism concept, Bleisure, is now being embraced worldwide that is applicable to American Samoa's future tourism plans. This concept has the potential to increase air travel, hotel demand, shopping, local travel, restaurants and general tax income and tax generating commerce.

With the increased adoption of working at home using Facetime, Zoom, Viber, VoIP parents can take their families on vacations, while still meeting their work obligations from their hotel room.

Bleisure is a combination of the words business and leisure.

The original Bleisure concept was for a family to accompany a parent on a business meeting, with the biz complete, the trip would transform to tourism.

Technology like the territory's Hawaiki, ASH, SAS and negotiated connection to the Tui Cable allows one a conventional work day, in a hotel room, while the rest of the family goes to see the Shark & Turtle, the Jean P. Hayden Museum, Two Tala Beach, shop for hats, t-shirts, lava lavas at the Pago Maketi, Sadie's Gift Shop, Tedi's, Forsgren's, Manua Store, swim at the Sadie's by the Sea’s or Tradewinds' pools.

The family unit connects for breakfast, maybe lunch, and definitely dinner.  Thus a normal business day, but hosted seamlessly through technology.

Cool Stuff Jr was required to work from home under Los Angeles County's rules.  After a boring few weeks he surprised his Aiga Cool Stuff in Hawaii, where he self quarantined for 14 days while working from Fale Cool Stuff.  

It was outrageously funny that Cool Stuff Jr's business clients had zero clue he was in the islands. Jr did his 9am- 5pm job responsibilities and hung with his mom, Mrs. Cool Stuff, his sister Missy Cool Stuff in his breaks and off hours.  

So the territory can grab a share of the Bleisure  travel niche when the it decides it’s appropriate to open the borders.  Hawaiian Airlines, Samoa Air and Talofa Airways would expectedly support marketing to this quality segment of the tourism pie.

American tourists are burned out from lockdowns, looting and cable news.  The territory is a refuge of emotional escape, where the peaceful days of only four months ago can be savored in quiet enjoyment.