State tourism
drops 3.4 percent
in June

Visitors, however, stayed longer
than the same period last year

---

By Russ Lynch
rlynch@starbulletin.com

Visitor arrivals in June fell 3.4 percent short of the level of a year ago, and a slightly longer average length of stay failed to lift the economically important visitor days statistic into the positive, according to a monthly report by the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism.

Year-to-date arrivals were down slightly from the first half of last year, but visitors stayed a little longer, keeping first-half visitor days flat.

In June, arrivals from U.S. points were down 3.8 percent, to 406,642 for the month compared to 422,653 in June 2000. Domestic visitors stayed an average of 10.37 days last month, down from 10.45 days in June 2000, and that brought the visitor days total -- the number of tourists multiplied by the length of stay -- down 4.5 percent for domestic travelers, to 4.2 million last month from 4.4 million a year ago.

Total visitor days were not hurt that badly because of longer stays by international visitors. The total international arrivals last month, 192,552, was down 2.4 percent from 197,361 in June 2000.

But international visitors stayed an average of 6.32 days, up from 5.93 days a year ago. International visitor-days totaled 1.2 million, up from 1.17 million.

The result was 599,194 tourists from all points in June, compared to 620,014 a year earlier, and a June visitor-days total of 5.4 million, down 2.8 percent from 5.6 million.

For the first half of the year, tourist arrivals totaled 3.41 million, down 1.5 percent from 3.46 million in the first half of last year, but a shift in the six-month average length of stay to 9 days from 8.87 days resulted in 30.7 million visitor days for the latest half year, the same as the first half of last year.

Seiji Naya, director of DBEDT, said keeping the first half performance that same as last year's was a tribute to the hard work of Hawaii's tourism promoters.