Lag in visitor
numbers is shrinking

January drops 16.5%; Pro Bowl
expected to help February

---

By Russ Lynch
rlynch@starbulletin.com

As expected, tourism in Hawaii was down in January, four months after the Sept. 11 attacks that severely hurt all airline travel.

However, state officials see the 16.5 percent decline in total visitor arrivals from a year ago as a clear sign that the industry is recovering.

"Despite the decrease, January numbers reflect the continuing improvement in visitor arrivals since the events of Sept. 11," said Seiji Naya, director of the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism. "We should see an improvement in visitor numbers in February, as approximately 25,000 visitors came to Hawaii for the Pro Bowl game this year."

The formal department study works through surveys of travelers heading to Hawaii, immigration numbers of foreign arrivals and a number of other available visitor counts.

It showed that the year-over-year number of arrivals was down 30 percent in October, down 27.2 percent in November and down 16.1 percent in December. The average length of stay climbed at the same time, however, from 9.1 days in October to 9.61 days in November, 10.05 days in December and now 10.51 days in January.

While visitor industry executives say the length-of-stay numbers are not as important as they used to be because the biggest spenders, the Japanese, have dropped off sharply, they still watch the visitor-days figure, the number of visitors times the number of days they stay, because it deals with time and opportunities to spend money in the islands.

The 4.87 million visitor days last month were down 13.1 percent from 5.61 million in January 2001. The year-over-year decline in visitor days was 25.6 percent in October, 19 percent in November and 12.8 percent in December.

Oahu continued to suffer the biggest setback in visitors, because it relies more heavily on Japanese tourists than the neighbor islands.

In January, the number of Japanese arrivals fell 29.4 percent to 105,814 compared with 149,892 during January 2001. That helped bring Oahu to an overall 21.3 percent decline in tourist arrivals for the month.

All the neighbor islands -- except for Molokai where a small sample size makes the statistics a little uncertain -- showed decreases. Kauai traffic was down 11.6 percent, Maui was down 15.1 percent, Lanai (another small-sample area) was down 11.4 percent and the Big Island was down 8.9 percent.

Total January arrivals statewide of 463,357 were down from 554,710 in 2001. Arrivals from U.S. airports were down 8.4 percent at 306,559 from 334,497 and international arrivals of 156,798 were down 28.8 percent from 220,213 in January 2001. Japan produced 105,814 Hawaii visitors last month, down about 44,000 from 149,892 in January 2001.

So far in this month, according to a preliminary count by DBEDT, Japanese arrivals are about 33 percent below last year, better than the 60 percent declines that followed Sept. 11.