Business Briefs

Reported by Star-Bulletin staff & wire

Wednesday, April 21, 1999

State's jobless rate in March fell to 5.7% Hawaii's unemployment rate dropped to 5.7 percent in March, from 6.1 percent a year earlier and from 5.8 percent in February, the state Department of Labor & Industrial Relations said today. Still, the number of jobs in the islands was down by 1,400 from a year earlier, at 531,500 vs. 532,900 in March 1998. One positive sign was that the March job total was 2,100 higher than the February total this year, but the department cautioned that some of that was temporary jobs. Economists consider the jobs figure important because it comes from a broad survey of businesses. The number of unemployed, derived from a much smaller survey of households, was 33,800 last month, an improvement from 36,000 without jobs in March 1998 and 34,550 in February. As usual, Oahu led with the lowest unemployment rate among islands, 4.9 percent. All islands except Lanai showed lower unemployment rates than a year earlier. Molokai had the highest rate at 9.6 percent for March.

Hawaiian Air offers
year-end student fares

Hawaiian Airlines Inc. said today it will offer discounted fares on two special flights from the mainland in December to help college students from Hawaii get home for the holidays without paying high fares caused by millennium demand.

The special flights, leaving the West Coast a week before Christmas and returning New Year's Day or the day after, will be available at a student round-trip fare of $439 if booked through a travel agent or the airline. The tickets are nonrefundable and students must also be a member of the HawaiianMiles frequent-flier program.

A huge demand for trips to Hawaii for the year 2000's arrival has brought heavy bookings and the cheapest seats, which travel agents say soon may not even be available, are nearly double what Hawaiian will charge students on the two new flights. Hawaiian will handle the student business with a flight from Seattle Dec. 17, returning Jan. 2, and a Las Vegas-Los Angeles-Honolulu flight Dec. 18 returning Jan. 1.

State to report hotel occupancy

The state government has signed accounting and consulting firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Smith Travel Research to provide hotel occupancy numbers and other hotel statistics to the Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism.

The two consultants have worked together for some years studying and reporting on Hawaii hotel occupancy and room rates and they said today they check 70 percent of the rooms in the state. DBEDT, which took over visitor-arrivals reporting this year from the Hawaii Visitors & Convention Bureau, has told the Hawaii Tourism Authority it hopes to combine arrivals and occupancy numbers.

Airline to increase Oahu-Guam flights

Continental Airlines will increase its Honolulu-Guam service this summer to 10 flights a week from the current seven. The airline said that starting June 17, it will add evening departures from Honolulu on Thursdays and Sundays to what is now daily service. On July 1 it will add another flight, leaving Honolulu on Tuesday nights.

Maui students take 4th in CNBC contest

A team of eight 11th-grade students at Baldwin High School on Maui made it to fourth place in the CNBC/Lincoln Financial Group annual stock tournament. The team, Bullish Bears, increased its portfolio by 65.3 percent in less than three months and was featured on the financial news network's "Market Wrap" show.

Hilton's profits up 11% in quarter

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- Hilton Hotels Corp., the third-largest U.S. hotel company, said today that first-quarter profit rose 11 percent as it bought new hotels and filled more rooms and raised prices at properties it already owned.

Profit from operations rose to $42 million, or 16 cents a share, from $38 million, or 14 cents in the year-ago quarter. The profit matched the average estimate from analysts polled by First Call Corp., according to Bloomberg News.