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Friday, August 31, 2001


Japanese tourists
to isles pick
up in July

The total number of arrivals,
however, declines 1.6
percent in the month


By Lyn Danninger
ldanninger@starbulletin.com

An increase in Japanese visitors provided a bright spot for Hawaii's July tourism, even though year-to-date arrivals remain flat, according to state figures released yesterday

Art In all, 643,452 tourists visited Hawaii last month, a drop of 1.6 percent from July 2000.

Year-to-date arrivals were down by 1.5 percent but a 1.3 percent increase in the average length of stay, from 8.9 to 9.2 days, helped to offset that figure.

For the first time since January, the number of Japanese visitors to Hawaii rose, showing a 3.2 percent improvement over July last year, with 157,190 arrivals up from 152,325 last year. The average length of stay for Japanese visitors also improved by 8.7 percent compared to last July.

Arrivals from the U.S. mainland were down 0.5 percent in July, to 431,997 from 434,132 a year earlier.

Domestic visitors stayed an average of 10.40 days in July, down slightly from 10.46 days in July 2000.

Visitor arrivals from the U.S. West grew 0.4 percent in July. Arrivals from that market during the first seven months of the year accounted for one of the strongest overall increases -- 4.8 percent compared to last year.

A total of 251,488 U.S. West Coast visitors came to the islands during July, 26.9 percent of whom were first time visitors.

State Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism economist Pearl Imada Iboshi said despite mostly flat numbers, the outlook for Hawaii is still positive.

"The year 2000 was the strongest in the history of the Hawaii visitor industry yet we've been able to pretty much maintain that level in July," she said.

"So flat against the best year ever is very good."

Iboshi said there's no clear explanation for the sudden improvement in Japanese tourism numbers, except for recent marketing efforts in that country.

"There has been an increase in Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau marketing in Japan and that might have helped," she said.



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