January had been a good month for Tahiti Tourisme .

The Destination Marketing Organization for French Polynesia (which trades as The Islands of Tahiti) had much to be proud of, and plenty to look forward to. After a complete shutdown of air traffic from North America at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak in the spring of 2020, French Polynesia reopened to visitors on July 15 with testing and contact tracing protocols in place—easily the gold standard for safe pandemic tourism.

Resorts reopened, and visitors began to slowly return. Even when the United States Centers for Disease Control announced that travelers returning from international destinations would be required to show proof of a negative COVID-19 test , French Polynesia prepared rapid testing stations at the airport and made plans to cover quarantine expenses for travelers testing positive before their return flights.

Then the hammer came down. On January 31, French Overseas Minister Sebastian Lecornu appeared on Tahitian television with news that the ministry had closed France’s borders to all but travelers with specific imperatives—economic support through tourism is not among them. The directive also applies to travel between metropolitan France and French Polynesia , which is part of the French Republic but has a separate Customs union.

The announcement came as a surprise in Tahiti, where new infections had slowed from late fall peaks. The testing program implemented at reopening had proven so effective that there were debates in the local government over whether the expense justified its continuation. Of 51,000 tests returned by inbound travelers on their fourth day after arrival (which had a return rate over 90 percent) only 275 were positive, leading government ministers to question whether the country’s testing capacities were being effectively deployed.

The message also landed in the country’s tourism industry with the frustration of an edict from afar. French Polynesia is a semi-autonomous region of France with its own assembly—ordinances here are often fomented by the local government and jointly announced by the President of French Polynesia and the French High Commissioner, who is a representative of the French Republic (similar to a regional prefect in metropolitan France).

This time, the announcement came directly from Paris, nearly 10,000 miles distant from Tahiti.

"Today, the threat is great for French Polynesia: if one of the [new virus] variants were to be detected, we could be confronted with an explosion of cases and a complete embolism of its hospital system [in Tahiti]," Lecornu told viewers, in French with Tahitian subtitles.

“If the variants were to circulate actively in France and in some overseas territories at the same time, we might not be able to support French Polynesia as we did before".

The policy took effect on February 3. Visitors already in French Polynesia weren’t necessarily compelled to end their visits early, but the vast majority of the country’s resort hotels were closed by the following week. Only a handful of hotels and guest houses (mostly on islands where they are the sole lodging option) and the InterContinental on Tahiti remain open for the handful of necessary travelers, such as government workers, students, healthcare workers and airline crews operating “territorial continuity” flights from Paris.

Frustratingly for many tourism operators, the Overseas Minister mentioned no threshold for when the country could be reopened to tourism and made only vague promises of economic support. The economic support for the tourism and related industries came within the following few days, with direct payments and loan guarantees planned for tourism industry businesses and their displaced employees.

The President of French Polynesia, Edouard Fritch, has asked the Overseas Ministry to limit the closure to three months, as French Polynesia’s economy is overwhelmingly dependent on open borders and inbound international tourism. Almost mercifully, the announcement came in the middle of French Polynesia’s low season, which runs the first three months of the year.

Air Tahiti Nui , the national airline of French Polynesia, had seen improving booking trends before the announcement, noted the airline’s Vice President, Americas, Nick Panza: “[we] have enjoyed a good period of travel from the US market since July of 2020, when the destination reopened. There was a further rebound in bookings from January of this year. Agents and consumers were confident in the destination and its testing protocol.”

Air Tahiti Nui, which counts primarily on leisure visitors among US-originating passengers, is suspending service to Los Angeles from February 14 through the end of March, mirroring the resort closures in effect. United Airlines has also suspended service from San Francisco to Papeete.

Both Air Tahiti Nui and Air France normally operate services to Paris via Los Angeles and will continue to operate their Paris flights via Vancouver, as the US does not allow EU nationals to transit the country en route from Paris to Tahiti. In addition to passengers, the flights also carry vital cargo, including vaccines.

As for travelers planning 2021 visits to French Polynesia, Tahiti Tourisme expects the closure to be “as temporary as possible to allow for new adaptations to assure the safety of our local population.”

Already booked travelers with plans over the affected dates can rebook for later in 2021 using the common cancellation policies agreed to among all operators in the Islands of Tahiti, and most importantly, those planning to visit later in the year can lean on those cancellation policies to book with confidence.

Panza is also positive in outlook: “There is good demand for the Islands of Tahiti. From May, June onwards, we have an increase in bookings and April is holding steady.”

To plan a visit to the Islands of Tahiti later in 2021, visit Tahiti Tourisme’s website .