Tourism rebounds
with a 4.3 percent gain

But the HVCB says
the visitor count for '97 is still
down from last year

By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

Hawaii tourism rebounded strongly in March, with total visitor arrivals rising 4.3 percent from March 1996.

However, the Hawaii Visitors & Convention Bureau downplayed the positive March results in its monthly visitor arrivals announcement today, saying that totals for the first three months of the year trailed those of the same period last year by 1.4 percent.

The March increase, which compares with a strong March last year, came thanks to a 7 percent increase in mainland tourists and a 5.3 percent rise in arrivals from Japan and other Asia-Pacific areas.

The bureau said shorter stays by the Asia-Pacific travelers kept the average daily census of eastbound travelers flat in March, compared with a year earlier. The average daily census of travelers from the mainland, Canada and Europe was up 4.2 percent.

The result was a 3.1 percent increase, to 165,060, in the number of tourists in Hawaii on an average day in March.

Overall, there were 379,800 westbound arrivals in March, up 3.7 percent from a year earlier, and 248,760 eastbound tourists, up 5.3 percent from March 1996.

The HVCB said total travel to the neighbor islands was up 8.7 percent for March, and California, still Hawaii's biggest U.S. market, produced a 10.9 percent increase in statewide traffic.

In its release, Roberta Rinker-Ludloff, HVCB vice president for marketing, said although the March figures were encouraging, all major tourism indicators remained in the red for the first quarter as a whole. She said many HVCB members have reported slow bookings for the coming months.

Keith Vieira, vice president and director of marketing at ITT Sheraton Hawaii, said April produced fewer hotel guests than the company had predicted. But, he add

ed, "revenue was up a little because rates increased."

Bookings for the immediate future aren't strong, and "we're not real happy with the results for the first four months," Vieira said.

But Ken Phillips, a spokesman for California-based Pleasant Hawaiian Holidays said today that his company's business was up about 8 percent for April and the first four months, thanks to some special promotions.

Rinker-Ludloff said each of the four major islands posted gains in March arrivals compared with March 1996, with the Big Island up 9.5 percent, Kauai up 4.8 percent, Maui up 2.4 percent and Oahu up 1.4 percent.