By Russ LynchIn April, 4.9 percent more tourists came to Hawaii but they had shorter stays
Added to the strong tourist industry performance of the first quarter, the April arrivals created a year-to-date record, the best four-month total since the last great year for tourism, 1990, before the recession sent the numbers plummeting.
Through the first four months of this year, Hawaii had 2.28 million visitor arrivals, up 8.4 percent from 2.1 million a year earlier and 1.5 percent from the 1990 record of 2.24 million, the HVB said.
The heavier traffic was encouraged in part by increased airline seat capacity, something the HVB has sought for years. Paul Casey, HVB president and chief executive officer, said Hawaii had more traffic from the eastern states and Delta Air Lines' move to increase flights from its Atlanta hub was one of the reasons.
Barbara Okamoto, HVB research director, said new direct flights from Canada to Kauai also boosted traffic. In both cases, Okamoto said, travel continued after the winter peak.
"They're done with their winter season and they're still up 3.2 percent for April," Okamoto said of the Canadians. "Regionally there was a bigger surge from New England and the east-south-central states, that feed into Delta's Atlanta hub."
April arrivals from all points totaled 528,870, a 4.9 percent increase from the April 1995 total of 504,150, the HVB said. However, visitors were here for a shorter time than a year earlier, staying an average of 8.13 days compared with 8.48 days in April 1995.
The result was a flat average daily census, the number of people visiting the islands on an average day, of 143,360 in April, up only 0.6 percent from 142,470 in April of last year. The visitor industry watches the daily tourist census because it translates directly into money spent and the amount of dollars coming into the Hawaii economy.
If it wasn't for Japan, however, the April figures would not have looked so good. Eastbound arrivals, led by the Japanese but including Australians, New Zealanders, Koreans, Taiwanese and other Asians totaled 200,200 last month, a record for April.
That was a whopping 14.2 percent increase in eastbound arrivals over April 1995's 175,150 and better than the previous April record of 176,330 in 1992.
"Although arrivals in April did not continue at the feverish pace established during the first quarter of the year, the strong eastbound market presented Hawaii with a slight increase in overall arrivals in what is traditionally a slower month for visitors," Casey said.
The westbound market, primarily travelers from the United States and Canada, overall was flat in April, actually showing a 0.1 percent decline from April 1995 with 328,670 arrivals last month compared with 329,000 in the previous April.
It is apparently still difficult to get the Japanese and other foreigners to visit the neighbor islands and the result, with lackluster mainland traffic, was a decline in travel to all the neighbor islands except Kauai and Lanai.
Kauai had 78,000 visitors last month, an 8.6 percent increase from 71,830 in the previous April. Okamoto said Kauai nevertheless still has some hotel rooms not reopened after the damage caused by Hurricane Iniki in 1992 and is still not performing as well as it was before the hurricane. A lot of the increase is attributable to the direct flights from Canada, she said.
Lanai, where tourist numbers are small compared with the rest of the state, attracted 7,810 visitors last month, a 3.6 percent increase from 7,540 in the previous April.
Travel to the other neighbor islands was down, however. Maui had a 5.6 percent decline to 176,580 last month, from 187,090 in April 1995. Travel to the Big Island was down 4.8 percent to 80,330 arrivals last month, from 84,400 in the previous April. Molokai's visitor traffic was down 25.8 percent at 5,240 last month from 7,060.