State of Hawaii: Safely reopening for tourism by tracking traveler data
Egen helped Hawaii reopen for tourism by tracking traveler data
The state government wanted visitors to be able to come here—and for residents to feel safe, and for everyone to actually be safe. We have been able to welcome visitors back to Hawaii while maintaining the lowest case counts in the United States.
The COVID-19 pandemic put a sudden stop to tourism in the State of Hawaii, which had an immediate impact on revenues within the state’s economy. So when restrictions began to ease, the state was eager to reopen its economy and welcome visitors again, with safety for everyone top of mind.
To safely reopen to tourism, Hawaii needed a scalable digital solution that could be deployed across its systems to track traveler data in real time, without the time and expense of one-on-one human interactions. The solution also needed to be sophisticated enough to support a multilayered process that incorporated several state departments across all of the islands. Hawaii worked with Egen and Google Cloud to build the Safe Travels program, allowing the state to collect and track travel and health information for all visitors.
The state has made the anonymized data available via a public dashboard powered by Looker, Looker Studio, and BigQuery. State officials and the public can access and analyze the data using various visualizations.
Since its launch in August 2020, more than 2.6 million travelers have used the Safe Travels program, and more than 2.4 million quarantine-exemption requests have been processed through the online system.
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