Mainland tourism Spurred by the Pro Bowl, tourist arrivals from the mainland in February almost equaled those of a year earlier -- welcome sign after the slump that followed Sept. 11.
arrivals rebound
But the Japanese market
remains depressed in FebruaryBy Russ Lynch
rlynch@starbulletin.com
However, international arrivals, led by the Japanese, continue to run well below last year, causing an overall 9.4 percent drop in visitor arrivals last month, the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism said yesterday.
Visitors stayed a little longer than they did a year earlier, by nearly half a day, bringing total visitor days to 5.1 percent below February 2001.
Arrivals from U.S. airports totaled 344,693 last month, down 0.2 percent from 345,415 in February 2001. International arrivals, the slowest to recover from Sept. 11, were down 24.7 percent at 157,683 from a year-earlier 209,273. Of those, 110,484 Japanese arrived last month, down 25.1 percent from 147,423 the previous February.
Although the February figures were not good enough to offset the overall weakness in the tourism market, DBEDT Director Seiji Naya said he was pleased to see that the domestic market has almost recovered from Sept. 11.
February figures were helped by nearly 25,000 people coming to see the Pro Bowl Feb. 9, Naya said. The Pro Bowl was a week earlier in February last year and some of those travelers in 2001 would have shown up in January figures.
Naya said Pro Bowl publicity helped Hawaii a lot. "The television coverage showing the beauty of our islands and coverage of top NFL athletes, their families and fans enjoying their stay showcased Hawaii in a positive light," Naya said.
Hawaii had a total of 502,376 visitors last month, down from 554,688 in the previous February. A 9.39-day average stay, up from 8.97 days in February 2001, brought visitor days to 4.72 million, down from 4.97 million a year earlier.
As has been the case since Sept. 11, Oahu suffered more than the other islands because it is more dependent on Japanese travelers. Oahu had a 15.4 percent year-over-year decline in total visitor arrivals. Kauai was down 2.2 percent, Maui and Molokai were each down 4 percent and the Big Island was down 1.9 percent. Lanai, where DBEDT cautions that the numbers are too small for a fair count, had a 7 percent increase in arrivals.
Preliminary numbers for March show that the Japanese are coming back, with a 12.2 percent decline in the first 19 days of March from the same period in 2001. Domestic arrivals for the first 18 days were down 3.3 percent from the same time last year.
DBEDT started putting visitor expenditure estimates into its monthly announcement, although the spending numbers are for January, not February. They show tourists spending an average of $184 a day in January, up 7 percent from the January 2001 average of $172. Because January visitor days fell this year, total visitor spending dropped 7.2 percent year-over-year at $897.3 million in January 2002 compared to $966.6 million in January 2001.
Japanese visitors continued to outspend the rest with a daily January average of $265, compared to $165 a day by visitors from the U.S. West and $171 a day from the U.S. East.