Hawaii visitor count drops 1%

By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

Sagging business from Japan last month dragged Hawaii's overall visitor count below the June 1996 level and tour operators say that critical market shows no signs of heating up for the rest of the summer.

A total of 582,230 visitors came to the islands in June, a 1.1 percent decline from 588,640 a year earlier, the Hawaii Visitors & Convention Bureau said yesterday in its monthly report on the tourism industry.

Westbound markets, led by the mainland but also including Canada and Europe, produced 6,060 more tourists last month than in June 1996, the HVCB said. But that was more than wiped out by a drop of 12,670 in arrivals from the eastbound markets, headed by Japan but including Taiwan, Korea and other Asia-Pacific areas.

The HVCB does not break out individual countries in its monthly reports but there are indications that Japan may have slipped more than other places.

Hawaii travel on Japan Airlines was down about 14 percent last month, said Gilbert Kimura, the airline's regional sales manager. "We don't really have any reason other than there has been a slow decrease," he said.

Kimura said July figures aren't in yet but early indications are that they are down about 10 percent. "We're really kind of nervous about August," because what is usually a strong summer vacation month appears slow from advance bookings, Kimura said.

"It's not too good," added Akira Kinjo, operations manager at Kintetsu International Express (USA) Inc., a leading seller of tours from Japan.

He said his company's numbers were down partly because it posted higher prices in Japan this year for summer travel to Hawaii.

Many in the local tourism industry expect overall travel from Japan for 1997 to be down 2 or 3 percent, said Steve Kawagishi, executive director of the Japan Hawaii Travel Association, a trade group of Japanese tour operators.

Still, Kawagishi noted, the decrease is not so bad considering the overall numbers. "We cannot forget that every year we had a record number of visitors from Japan."

The numbers of Japanese tourists to Hawaii are running over 2 million a year and that's "still pretty good," he said.

Kazumasa "Kaz" Tamura, the HVCB vice president for the Asia-Pacific region, said trade sources tell him that overall bookings for August and September are just below last year's.

Barbara Okamoto, HVCB director of market research, said, "What it's telling us is that the market condition in Japan is not good for Hawaii."

Both said they expect results of a special advertising campaign in Japan to start showing up in late summer and early fall and a smaller follow-up campaign is being planned for later in the year.

The HVCB spent $6 million on advertising in Japan in April and May, part of a $10 million appropriation approved by the Legislature at Gov. Ben Cayetano's request.

The other $4 million was spent on the mainland and positive results are already showing, said Roberta Rinker-Ludloff, HVCB vice president for marketing.

"We're seeing the first positive impact in the June numbers from California and other parts of the West Coast," she said.

Mainland visitors last month were up 2.9 percent, totaling 310,720, the HVCB said.

The westbound total was up by 1.8 percent to 353,860 tourists. However, the eastbound flow was down 5.3 percent to 228,370.

The Asia-Pacific travelers continued to shorten their stays, a trend that has had tourism officials worried all year. They cut an average of almost half a day off their visits, meaning less opportunity to spend money.

Their average stay was 5.41 days last month compared with 5.81 days a year earlier.

The lower numbers and shorter stays brought the eastbound visitor-days count -- the number of visitors times the number of days they stayed -- down a whopping 11.8 percent. The dip in eastbound travel came despite a 4.5 percent increase in the number of scheduled airline seats inbound from Asia and the Pacific, the HVCB numbers show.

Westbound travelers, who generally stay nearly twice as long in the islands as their Asia-Pacific counterparts, stayed a little longer last month, an average of 10.52 days compared with 10.35 days the previous June.