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Visitor traffic
picking up

Tourists from the mainland
gained 9.7 percent in March
while traffic from Asia
declined slightly

By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

A jump in the number of mainlanders visiting Hawaii in March easily made up for a small decrease in tourist traffic from Japan and other foreign points, to bring the overall visitor count up 5 percent from March 1999.

And visitor days rose 3.8 percent, according to the state's monthly tourism report. The visitor-days figure, the total number of visitors multiplied by the average length of stay, is considered the most important economic indicator in tourism because it better reflects how much time tourists have to spend money in Hawaii.

Longer stays by international travelers and the overall increase in the number of tourists worked together to counter a small decrease in the Americans' length of stay. In all, Hawaii had 5.5 million visitor days in March compared with 5.3 million in March 1999, the state said today.

While arrivals from Japan were still down from a year earlier, they came close to matching the year-earlier number and officials in Hawaii's Japanese tourist business talked cautiously about a recovery after several years of stagnation.

Takashi Kitamura, president of JTB Hawaii Inc., the local arm of Japan's biggest travel company Japan Travel Bureau, said Japanese business has been strong although not like it used to be. Kitamura suggested caution in comparing this year to 1999 because the early 1999 performance was "very bad."

Still, business has picked up. "The increase for the past month is much higher than we expected," he said last week. April is running about 18 percent above April in Japanese arrivals, Kitamura said.

"The forecast for us for May, June and July is very good. Especially the month of June is very good," he said.

JTB is pushing the neighbor islands as a new destination for many Japanese visitors who have been to Waikiki on short stays but not gone farther, he said.

Darrell Metzger, president and chief executive officer of Atlantis Adventures, which operates tourist submarines and park attractions, said his company has seen a moderate increase in Japanese business this year.

"In general, it is better. Month-to-month it gets a little bit better. It's not dramatic but it goes up 1 (or) 2 percent. This time last year, we were happy to say that things were stable," Metzger said.

One problem remains, he said. Sales of optional tours to the Japanese arrivals continue to lag. "We need to make a lot of effort to put something new out there that's not pricey," Metzger said.

One of his company's solutions is to let children in free and some of those programs will start to show up this summer, he said.

Today's figures from the Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism show that 159,482 Japanese traveled to Hawaii in March, a decrease of 0.7 percent from 160,682 in March 1999.

However, the average Japanese visitor in March stayed 5.77 days vs. 5.65 days in the year-earlier month. This pushed Japanese visitor days up 1.2 percent to 919,700, from a year-earlier 908,630.

Overall international arrivals, those arriving on flights from foreign cities, were down 0.9 percent at 223,335 in March, from 225,451 in the previous March.

The non-Japanese international visitors reduced their stay, however, bringing total visitor-days of international travelers down 6.2 percent to 1.66 million, from 1.76 million.

The strength of the U.S. economy continued to keep the domestic-arrivals numbers high in March, with total arrivals on U.S. airlines up 8.5 percent at 402,978, compared with 371,255 in the year-earlier month. Some of those travelers originated in foreign countries but 90 percent were U.S. residents.

The fact that mainland numbers are up was no surprise to visitor industry executives who say they have seen months of growth.

"After a rather slow January, February and March picked up considerably," said Ken Phillips, a spokesman for Pleasant Hawaiian Holidays, the biggest producer of packaged tours from the mainland to Hawaii.

"Year-to-date, through the first quarter, we are ahead of our 1999 banner year by nearly 11 percent, with prospects for the remainder of the spring and fall looking even better," said Phillips from the company's Westlake Village, Calif., headquarters. "April and May are virtual sellouts, with June, July and August showing good strength," he said last week.