Not only were there fewer mainland visitors, their stays were shorter, said the HVCB in its monthly report.

"We've got to increase our marketing visibility on the mainland if we are going to remedy decreases in visitor days, arrivals and spending," said Paul Casey, HVCB president.

Flat and disappointing is how Casey described October's 0.7 percent rise in tourist arrivals compared with October 1995.

October's result left Hawaii 4.8 percent ahead of 1995 in tourist arrivals through the first 10 months of the year.

However, the figures show that Hawaii still has not been able to get its tourism numbers back up to where they were in 1990, before Hurricane Iniki and an economic recession devastated the state's top industry. The January-October visitor arrivals total was 2 percent lower than the number for the equivalent period of 1990.

Outrigger Hotels & Resorts said its October and November westbound business was soft. Rob Solomon, senior vice president of marketing, said one negative factor was the shut down of Rich International Airlines, the charter carrier that brought Sun Trips vacationers to Hawaii.

Sun Trips made alternative arrangements but the business was hurt in October, Solomon said.

Also, fall figures this year had to compete with strong numbers last year that were boosted by a number of significant conventions. "It's a hard act to follow," Solomon said.

However, good bookings for next year are a reason for optimism, he said.

Shorter stays kept the year-to-date daily visitor census - that is, the number of tourists in the islands on an average day - just 1.8 percent ahead of last year. The visitor industry considers the daily census the best indicator of how well tourism-related companies are doing since it reflects how many tourists are in the state and spending money on any given day.

For October, the HVCB recorded 521,480 tourist arrivals, only 0.7 percent ahead of the 518,060 visitor count for October 1995.

The westbound numbers, arrivals from the mainland, Canada and Europe, were down 5.9 percent for a total of 300,110 in October, compared with 318,870 in October of last year. That drop of nearly 19,000 people was countered by a 22,000 increase in the number of eastbound travelers, who totaled 221,370 in October, up 11.1 percent from 199,190 in the 1995 month.

One business that has not experienced a drop in travel from the mainland is Pleasant Hawaiian Holidays. The Westlake Village, Calif., company that has marketed Hawaii for decades and is one of the biggest suppliers of mainland tourists, said its business thrived in October.

"We had an increase of 12.4 percent compared to the previous October and our year-to-date business is about 12 percent ahead of last year," said Ken Phillips, public relations manager.

Phillips said the company's Hawaii business for all of 1996 looks like it will be 12 to 15 percent ahead of last year.

Eastbound travelers, particularly the Japanese, generally make much shorter visits than the mainlanders. However, their stays were longer in October.

The average length of stay by eastbound visitors was 5.61 days in October, up from 5.4 days a year earlier.

Westbound travelers stayed an average of 10.34 days, barely changed from 10.3 days a year earlier.

Among the individual islands, the Big Island showed the best performance with a 16.7 percent increase in arrivals in October, compared with the previous October. Kauai showed an increase of 4.1 percent and travel to Lanai was up 3.8 percent, but Maui was down 4.4 percent and Molokai was down 7.9 percent.