The state is feeling more optimistic about the strength of the economic recovery.

For the second time this year, the Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism revised upward its forecasts for visitor spending and visitor days, and for the first time in 2010 predicted that visitor arrivals will increase more than it expected.

State tourism liaison Marsha Wienert said the economic impact of new visitors is much stronger than anticipated because of increases the state is seeing out of the international market.

“;We're still projecting it will take the same amount of time to recover, but we think it will be a stronger recovery on an annual visitor growth rate,”; Wienert said. “;We said before it would be prolonged and flat, flat, flat the next few years, and now we're seeing the recovery happening a little faster and a little stronger than what we first projected. The bottom line is we're still projecting that we won't be back to where we were until the 2013 time frame, it's just that the recovery is starting a little faster.”;

DBEDT forecast in its quarterly report yesterday that visitor arrivals this year will now rise 2.6 percent to nearly 6.7 million, up from 2 percent in its previous projection that was made in February. That 2 percent forecast had matched its previous forecast in mid-November. For the first three months of the year, visitor arrivals by air were up 4.5 percent over the year-earlier period.

The department also forecast that visitor spending will rise 4.9 percent this year, up from 2.3 percent in its earlier forecast, and hit $10.6 billion. DBEDT also sees visitor days rising 2.6 percent, up from its 2.1 percent forecast in February.

Wienert said the optimism stems from first-quarter DBEDT numbers that showed visitor arrivals increasing from burgeoning markets such as South Korea, up 90.8 percent; Australia, up 26.3 percent; China, up 23.4 percent; New Zealand, up 19.5 percent; and Canada, up 17 percent.

“;The increases coming out of Asia are of particular interest because we have put so much into developing those markets over the last five, six years and we're starting to see the results from the marketing, relationship building and government relations,”; Wienert said.

Eugene Tian, research and statistics officer for DBEDT, said optimism also stems from a 4.6 percent increase in the general excise tax in the first quarter from the year-earlier period.

“;That's an indication of improvement in economic activity,”; he said.

In the latest report, DBEDT said it now sees the inflation-adjusted state gross domestic product increasing 1.1 percent this year, up slightly from its previous 0.9 percent forecast. Also, DBEDT revised upward its forecast for real personal income growth to 0.2 percent from zero.

DBEDT said it continues to expect inflation to remain at 1.7 percent, but also said total wage and salary jobs—a lagging indicator—are still expected to decline by 0.9 percent to 592,200 jobs.

“;While job growth should gradually turn positive as the year progresses, it will not likely be enough to avoid making this the third consecutive year of decline in Hawaii's total job count,”; DBEDT said.

On Wednesday, Gov. Linda Lingle announced a job-creation initiative that would offer incentives to private-sector companies and nonprofit organizations to hire unemployed residents by subsidizing their health insurance premiums for up to a year. Hawaii's unemployment rate stood at 6.9 percent in March.