Hawaii Vacation Specialist-Chris

For hawaii there are so many different ways to do interisland travel.  One request I do get a lot is a week stay with one night on each island which is really not an ideal way to do an interisland trip to hawaii and would be better off doing a 7 day hawaiian cruise.

The Norwegian Line is a great way to island hop.  The ships embark and disembark on the island of Oahu.  As of now there are 3 ships doing the 7 day sails.  The Pride of America, The Pride of Aloha and The Pride of Hawaii, sailing every Saturday, Sunday and Monday respectively.  The Pride of Aloha will be doing the 10 and 11 day sails starting in september, leaving just 2 ships doing the 7 day sails and next year starting in january the pride of hawaii will be leaving the islands leaving just the pride of america to do the 7 day sails and the pride of aloha to do the longer 10 and 11 day sails.  What makes these sails great is a lot of people only want a one week vacation but want to see many islands in a short period of time.  Doing an air/land package and seeing that many islands in one week, first of all gets costly and realistically you will get a tour of the wonderful hawaii airports.  Not the kind of vacation most people want.  Even though the flights are short usually between 35 and 45 minutes..you do have to take into account that they are air flights and you still have to check in about 60 minutes prior,go through security, if having a car you have to get to the car rental to drop off prior to that, get your luggage, get your next car, check in to your hotel, so a 30 minute flight turns into a 2 hour ordeal if not more in the long run.  If doing one week , 2 islands is the most I suggest doing..if wanting to see 3 islands take 9 days to do 3 nights on each island.

Well I get the people who want to set up camp on one island, but they just want to go to another island to see one specific thing.  Usually those things can be pearl harbor or the volcano and in that case you can do that also.  Many times I have had customers book a flight from honolulu in the morning over to hilo, get a car rental and take the day to do the volcanoes national park and fly back in the evening…makes it kind of a day tour or that days activity.  I have even had someone staying in maui for a wedding but really wanted to do the dolphin encounter so I got the girls a flight over in the morning, got them a car and they drove out to sea life park did the dolphin encounter and then flew back to maui that evening.  What makes that nice if just really wanting to do one thing on a certain island but not necessarily wanting to stay there is when travel on the flight you won’t have to check bags in or wait for bags upon arrival making it a quicker travel time.  For the island of maui there are ferries that can take you out of lahaina over to molokai or lanai for a day tour also.  Maui is the only island that you can do this from (so far).  We are still awaiting the superferry to launch in july which is a different version.  The molokai and lanai ferry system is to transport people, but you can do a molokai ferry tour with car rental package or a guided tour package making that another day trip to another island to explore or maybe for the avid golfer to take in a round of golf at one of their golf courses.

Another popular question is I want to do a helicopter tour to another island.  The helicopter tours go from every island but the tours are of that particular island.  If staying on the big island there are volcano tours, on maui either hana or haleakala tours but the choppers don’t go from island to island, that would be done through plane ride.

If wanting to do a multi-island package in hawaii an agent is always the best way to go, especially ones specializing in hawaii such as hawaii aloha travel.  We do these hawaii itineraries all day every day so we know what to do and what not to do.  For instance the order of islands to do.  If having oahu, maui, kauai and kona in the itinerary well I try not to get kona and kauai back to back because there are no direct flights, or if hilo is in the itinerary I usually try to have it before or after oahu getting a direct flight with different flight times to choose from.  Sometimes you can find direct flights from one island to the next but there may only be say 2, either early morning or late evening which most people want to go in the middle of the day to coordinate with check in and check out of the hotels.
 I will never forget once one of my customers who I became great friends with even after they returned home, was having me price match an itinerary he got from an airline package company.  Well first off we beat the price by over a thousand dollars and secondly when I saw the itinerary I was horrified which is why I say use an agent who knows how to do these itienraries well and always read your itinerary carefully and dont’ just scroll to the price.  I chose the islands in a specific order because there were so many in the itinerary like I mentioned above and when I got the itinerary he had gotten elsewhere, I said to him, did you look at the flight schedule?  and he said no what’s wrong with it? …well from kona to kauai they had an itnerisland flight that made 2 stops, one in maui and one in oahu, taking them a total of almost 6 hours to reach their next destination with the layovers they had which should have only taken 35-45 minutes had flights been done right or the island order been switched around.  When having that many islands you really dont want to be wasting time back tracking and making interisland stops if it can be avoided.  When I pointed that out , he surrendered his honeymoon planning over to me and happy to report they had a great time and we are still friends.

In short there are many different ways to do interisland travel and figuring out the best way that fits your needs is important and an agent can help you coordinate and figure out the best itinerary for you.  Hawaii multi island vacations are not easy to do on your own and I’ll be honest they aren’t always the easiest for us to do either.  They take time even for hawaii specialist to plan out a trip like that sometimes too.  The flights don’t always work right the first order we do them in so we try to figure out the best island order to do making it the most cost effective and also the least time consuming for you to enjoy your trip.

If planning a hawaii vacation especially a multi-island trip call hawaii aloha travel to get a hawaii specialist to help make the perfect vacation for you.  Thank you marie for the blog topic for today and I hope  I answered any questions you may have had!