Visitor numbers
drop in March

Industry execs express concern
even though the first quarter
matched last year's
record level

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By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

Travel to Hawaii from both mainland and foreign points fell off in March, leaving the year-to-date figures basically unchanged from the first three months of last year. But the state's tourism monitoring department said it does not see the numbers as bad, given last year's record-setting figures.

Visitors last month totaled 614,261, down 1.9 percent from 626,313 in March 2000. The decrease in volume was enough to wipe out the positive effect of a slightly longer length of stay, an average of 8.82 days last month compared to 8.78 days in March 2000. The overall result was a 1.5 percent decline in visitor days, the number of tourists times the length of stay, to 5.4 million last month from 5.5 million a year earlier.

"It is encouraging that arrivals for the first quarter of 2001 remain on pace with last year's record-breaking performance," said Seiji Naya, director of the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism.

"For the first quarter, the neighbor islands, especially Maui, are doing slightly better than last year fueled by increased visitations from the international market," Naya said.

Visitor arrivals for the first three months were unchanged from 1.72 million in the first quarter of last year.

In March alone, however, there were some significant declines from last year.

Arrivals from foreign points were down 4 percent, at 214,411 compared to 223,335 the previous March. Arrivals from mainland points were down 0.8 percent, at 399,850 last month from 402,978 in March 2000.

The average daily census of visitors, the number of tourists staying in the islands on an average day in March, was down 1.5 percent to 174,856 from 177,450 a year earlier.

Visitor arrivals on Oahu were down 2.5 percent from the previous March, Kauai arrivals were down 3.2 percent and Maui arrivals were down 0.5 percent. The Big Island did better with a gain of 1.3 percent. Molokai and Lanai, where the numbers are too small for reliable sampling, showed year-over-year gains of 21.6 percent and 7.7 percent respectively.

Visitor industry executives say they are worried about the coming summer, with bookings already well down from last year and falling off after fairly good traffic through the first three months. However, travelers are waiting until later than ever to book their Hawaii vacations, making it harder than to predict what will happen in the months ahead, industry officials say.

"April is definitely off from last year and May and early June look soft," said David Carey, president and CEO of Outrigger Hotels & Resorts.

There is some good news, such as the removal of strike threat at Delta Airlines, he said, and if the stock market stays stabilized Americans might be less worried and more inclined to travel, Carey said. A decline in travel from Japan last month was no surprise, he said, but he hopes the number of Japanese travelers won't decline too much." But there's probably no way they'll keep their spending up," Carey said.

Japanese visitor traffic fell off by 5.9 percent last month, to 150,109 travelers compared with 159,482 in the previous March.

One bright spot last month was the cruise business. Six ships came to Hawaii in March, carrying a total of 6,491 visitors, up 470 percent from 1,140 on cruise ships in March 2000.