Visitors on Travelers to Hawaii aboard cruise ships stay longer than those who come by air, visit more islands, come from east of the Rockies and are more likely to be first-time visitors than airline arrivals, a new study shows.
cruise ships provide
an appealing
demographic
A new study finds out
who comes to Hawaii
for a cruise vacationBy Russ Lynch
Star-BulletinContrary to some impressions about shipboard arrivals, the tourists also are very likely to stay in hotels at the start or end of their voyages.
None of that is surprising to those following the industry closely since those are the same arguments raised in favor of more local support for the cruise business. But the new study -- commissioned by the Northwest CruiseShip Association in collaboration with the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism -- has numbers that the industry says prove those points.
The survey of travelers aboard six of the 13 cruise liners that came to the islands in October and November obtained 1,854 completed forms representing 3,585 individual travelers, or about 36 percent of the nearly 9,900 passengers on the ships. Some of the conclusions were obvious, such as the fact that people spending the night in a cabin on a ship and eating ship-served meals that they paid for ahead of time are not as likely as other travelers to stay in island hotels or dine in local restaurants.
But there were many conclusions that department officials say illustrate the value of cruise-ship travelers to Hawaii tourism. For example:
>> More than half of those surveyed, 56.2 percent, were first-time visitors to the islands, making up a large impressionable audience who could be persuaded to visit again. From the U.S. East region, 64 percent of the cruise travelers were first-time visitors.In the category of visitor expenditures, the one that shows direct impact on the local economy, cruise visitors fell short. However, that is expected, due to the nature of cruises.>> Cruise visitors stay almost 10 days in the islands -- an average of 9.8 days among those surveyed -- about a day longer than other arrivals.
>> Three-quarters of the cruise arrivals (75.6 percent) stayed in the islands either before or after their cruise and the stays averaged two days.
>> Of the passengers surveyed, 62.4 percent came from the eastern United States, a relatively untapped market for Hawaii.
"The average cruise visitor spends a little over $83 per person per day while in Hawaii," the report said. "Those who stay beyond their tour contracts spend more ($92 per person per day) than those who do not ($77 per person per day)."
Those numbers are about half the daily spending numbers of those arriving by air, the report showed. For example, cruise visitors from the U.S. East spend an average of $87 per person per day while U.S. East arrivals by air spend some $177 a day each.
"Most of the difference between cruise and air passenger expenditures was accounted for by lower expenditures for lodging, food and transportation," the report said. "Expenditures for shopping, entertainment and recreation were similar for both groups."
But many of the visitors do stay in hotels.
"I think it's driven by two factors, what the customers want to do -- spend a little bit of time in some city or another -- and the logistics of getting them in and out in airline seats," said Murray Towill, president of the Hawaii Hotel Association.
"That's business people like to have," Towill said. "It tends to be year-round business and can help when (the hotels) are not busy."
The report issued yesterday is similarly optimistic.
"Findings show that cruise passengers have precisely the characteristics that fill visitor industry objectives," said an executive summary attached to the survey results.
"They are disproportionately non-U.S. West visitors, first-timers and multi-island visitors," the report said. "Does the cruise industry bring new visitors to Hawaii? The evidence strongly suggests that it does."