It’s been almost a year since cruise lines shut down to Hawaii and there’s no indication of when they might return.

Earlier this month, Norwegian Cruise Lines again extended the suspension of all cruises – including Pride of America, which operates in Hawaii – until the end of May 2021. Carnival Cruise Line did the same, Princess Cruises canceled all cruises worldwide May 15, and Celebrity Cruises and Royal Caribbean until the end of April.

The Canadian government, meanwhile, has suspended all passenger cruises through Canadian waters until the end of February 2022.

Hawaii Department of Transportation spokeswoman Shelly Kunishige said cruise companies are waiting for guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before announcing plans. With the CDC’s guidelines not being released anytime soon, cruises are unlikely to return for some time.

And since cruise traffic to the island has been off for nearly a year, companies that have relied on that traffic are facing problems.

“It sucks if we can go back to work this year,” said Jay Trombley, owner of Keikana Tours, who operates the Hoppa-On Hoppa-Off tour bus in Hilo.

Service was suspended in March after cruises stopped coming, Trombley said. The company tried to provide service to visitors arriving by air with little success.

“Most of the people who come in these days are renting cars now,” Trombley said. “Nobody calls about tours these days … It’s a shame we had something good before the pandemic.”

While 2019 wasn’t quite the state’s busiest year for cruise traffic since the 2008 recession, it was still robust with more than 277,000 cruise passengers visiting Hawaii, 94% of whom visited the Big Island.

Even with a Hilo staple like Keikana Tours, which Trombley said employed eight drivers before the pandemic, smaller businesses that rely on cruises are no better off. Big Island Aina Tours, a small husband and wife-run travel business in Hilo, is closed indefinitely after requests for tours have dropped to virtually zero, said co-owner Tina Nelson.

“We plan to reopen when the cruises come back,” said Nelson. “But it’s just wait and see for now.”

Dinnie Kysar, president of Hilo, a nonprofit tourism destination, said the Aloha information station at Mo’oheau Park is now only open for a few hours one day a week, and some of those days have no visitors at all.

“We get some people to look for directions or what’s open,” said Kysar. “But we are now helping the locals more with the bus timetables.”

The Lyman Museum in Hilo only receives about 10 visitors a day.

“We typically see two full buses a month during the cruise season, which equates to about 100 more visitors to the museum,” said Barbara Moir, museum president and chief executive officer. “It doesn’t sound like a lot, but it was a lot for us.”

Kysar, Nelson, and Trombley each expressed hope that the cruises could return sometime this summer. Currently, NCL’s cruise suspension allegedly ends in June, while the port of Hawaii already docked in Hilo on May 4th – although these dates can and have been postponed multiple times in the past.

But even if cruises do return, there is no guarantee that they will save local businesses.

“We’re not directly linked to the cruise lines,” Trombley said. “They make contracts with certain tour groups for their passengers, but we are right there and sometimes passengers have heard of us and they are looking for us.”

“But I worry if they just let passengers on tour with their contract groups when they come back,” continued Trombley.

Kysar said she had heard discussions about cruise lines only working in “pods” to avoid possible COVID-19 exposures: passengers are only allowed to take approved tours and only visit approved companies. Such an agreement could be lucrative for the lucky companies approved in the capsule, but it would leave many others in the state they are in – which many cannot hold out much longer.

“If we can’t get back to work by the end of the year, we may have to look at something else,” said Trombley.

Nelson said she was lucky enough to get a second job, but added that the state’s pandemic unemployment programs had been “a godsend”.

Despite the devastating effects of the pandemic around the world, Nelson believes people will not stay away from cruises for long.

“Our customer demographics were already a bit older, so there may be fewer people around,” said Nelson. “But I think a lot of people are still in love with cruises.”

Email Michael Brestovansky at mbrestovansky@hawaiitribune-herald.com.