This has required some rather creative logistics to enable foreign ships to cruise Hawaii economically. Passengers on foreign cruise ships will either fly to Hawaii first, or fly home from Hawaii after their cruise. A typical cruise scenario is a two-phase operation from the ship's point of view. In the first phase, U.S. and other passengers are embarked from either Ensenada, Mexico or Vancouver, British Columbia. The vessel then spends about four days at sea and stops at Hawaii ports for the remaining four to five days of the ten-day tour, ending the cruise in Honolulu.
Passengers then debark to either fly home or spend additional time in Hawaii.
In phase II, a new group of passengers who arrived in Hawaii by air are embarked, tour the island ports, and finally spend four days at sea, to be debarked in Vancouver or Ensenada. Coupled with American Hawaii Cruises expectations, Hawaii could be hosting nearly 400,000 cruise passengers in 2005, before AHC's Independence and temporary foreign ship are decommissioned. The level might drop to about 300,000 in 2006 but build slowly back up to over 500,000 by 2020. I improvements would include new terminal facilities at Honolulu Harbor's Pier 2 and renovations and retrofits to Neighbor Island ports. Nevertheless, the report expects that either additional sources of revenues will be needed to fund the improvements, or arrangements made for development of facilities by a t hird party.