The Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau said visitor days -- the number of visitors multiplied by the average number of days they stayed -- fell 4.9 percent in February compared with February 1996.

"Traditionally we have put too much emphasis on visitor arrivals," said Roberta Rinker-Ludloff, HVCB vice president of marketing. "We need to look more carefully at the trends in the average daily census, visitor days and length of stay because these give us a better idea of how many people are here, spending money from day to day."

The average daily visitor census, meaning the average number of tourists in the islands on any given day of the month, was down 1.5 percent at 173,000 in February, from 175,590 in February 1996.

Not much, if any, improvement can be expected for March or April, the HVCB said in its monthly report yesterday.

Meanwhile, total visitor arrivals in February were 554,840, down 3.9 percent from 577,560 in February 1996. The biggest decline was in westbound tourism, with a drop of 6 percent to 330,420, from 351,380. The HVCB said there was a softening in travel from North America and Europe.

Eastbound arrivals, from Japan and other parts of Asia and the Pacific, were down 0.8 percent at 224,420, compared with 226,180 in the year-earlier month. That nearly flat result, combined with a dip of only half a percentage point in length of stay to 5.83 days, resulted in a 2.3 percent increase in the average daily census of Asia-Pacific visitors.

That was not enough, however, to offset the decline in the daily census of westbound visitors.

The HVCB noted that February 1996 was strong for tourism, partly because in a leap year it had 29 days compared with 28 days this year and partly because of a boost in arrivals from Japan after recovery from the Kobe earthquake in 1995.

Visitors made shorter stays this February, an average of 8.73 days, down 1 percent from an average stay of 8.82 days in February 1996. Length of stay has been down in all but three of the last 26 months, the HVCB said.

The HVCB also said it hopes to see results as early as June from a $10 million state-funded advertising campaign -- $6 million in Japan and $4 million on the mainland -- approved by Gov. Ben Cayetano last month, Rinker-Ludloff said.