Tourism gaining ground Visitor arrival statistics were down again for March but traffic increased from the U.S. West, Hawaii's biggest tourist market, and there are signs that tourism is making a comeback from the plunge that followed the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, according to new state government figures.
March arrivals were still down,
but the margin is narrowing as
West Coast travel picks upBy Russ Lynch
rlynch@starbulletin.com
Hawaii had 567,870 visitors staying overnight or longer in March, down 7.6 percent from 614,261 in March 2001, the Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism said yesterday.
That wasn't too bad, said DBEDT director Seiji Naya. "We are encouraged to see that the 9/11 impact is diminishing," he said. "Since the original shock, monthly visitor counts have been consistently improving. Our largest market, the U.S. West, has been doing well since last December" and provided about 37 percent of Hawaii's total visitor traffic in March, Naya said.
Total arrivals from all points were down 16.5 percent in January and down 12.9 percent in February, compared to the year-earlier months, so the March year-over-year decline was an improvement.
From U.S. airports, Hawaii had 390,753 visitors in March, down 2.3 percent from 399,850 in March 2001. International arrivals last month totaled 177,117, down 17.4 percent from 214,411 in the year-earlier month.
Japanese visitors totaled 122,633 last month, down 18.3 percent from 150,109 in the previous March.
Among the individual islands, only Molokai -- where the state says the numbers are too small to be comparable with most of the state -- showed an increase, recording 8,143 arrivals, up 15.7 percent from 7,036 in March 2001.
Oahu visitor traffic was down 9.4 percent, with 372,951 arrivals last month compared to 411,675 in March last year. It was the biggest decrease in the state because of the decline in the number of travelers from Japan, who mostly stay on Oahu and don't much affect neighbor island counts.
Kauai had 83,069 visitors last month, down 9.1 percent from 91,394 in March 2001. Maui's visitor traffic was down 5 percent at 190,613 last month, from 200,650 in the year-earlier month.
The Big Island had only a 3.6 percent year-over-year decline, with 110,696 visitors last month compared to 114,845 in March 2001.
Visitor traffic to Lanai, another destination where the visitor count is low enough to make comparisons hard, was down 4.5 percent at 8,171 last month from a year-earlier 8,557 in the previous March.
The average length of stay last month among all visitors was 8.8 days, down slightly from 8.82 days in March 2001, and the result was a total of nearly 5 million visitor days in March, down 7.8 percent from 5.4 million in the year-earlier month.
Visitor spending, which lags the tourism count by one month, marked a bright footnote at the end of DBEDT's report. February visitor ex- penditures of $857.7 million were up 2.7 percent from the February 2001 level.
