Tourism down 30 percent
By Curtis Lum
Advertiser Staff Writer
Hawai'i lost 30 percent of its visitors in the first full month after the Sept. 11 attacks, according to some of the firmest data yet detailing the depth of the downturn that has rocked the state's tourism industry.
While Hawai'i tourism officials had expected a bleak October because of travelers' uncertainty following the attacks — with many executives citing indications of a continued slump of about 20 percent — the numbers released yesterday were a grim reminder of how bad things really are.
Last month, 387,183 people visited the Islands — 30 percent fewer than traveled to Hawai'i in the same month a year ago, according to the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism.
And the effects of losing 168,418 visitors for the month have reverberated through the economy, particularly in Waikiki.
Job cuts, many by retailers and hotels, sent Hawai'i's unemployment rate surging to its highest level in two years last month. Nearly 30,000 Hawai'i residents have applied for unemployment benefits since Sept. 11, about three times the number that applied in the same period a year ago.
"Obviously, all of us realize it's a serious situation and everybody's working together more and more each day, and the momentum has been building on a lot of fronts," Tony Vericella, president and chief executive of the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau, said. "We all want it to get better faster, but it doesn't happen in that fashion."
Total visitor days — a key measure of industry health that looks at the number of visitors and the number of days stayed in Hawai'i — dropped 25.6 percent from a year earlier.
Many hotel, retail and other executives say the decline — in some cases longer and deeper than initially expected — is continuing into this month. Visitor arrivals have been off more than 20 percent this month, and some executives have said the weakness could continue into the first quarter of next year.
In the most recent hotel occupancy data for the week ended Nov. 10, for example, Hawai'i hotels reached more than 65 percent, the strongest week yet. But that still trailed last year's occupancy levels by about 19 percent on average per week.
Hawai'i Hotel Association president Murray Towill said the industry and state are taking "important steps in the recovery process," but much more needs to be done.
"Obviously we've got a long way to go to get back to anything resembling normal," Towill said.
Still, some said yesterday that despite the grim numbers, the tourism industry began to show signs of recovery near the end of last month.
"So although the averages are certainly startling, the consolation is that we've been seeing the gap between last year's performance and this year's performance close between the latter half of October," said Joseph Toy, president of Hospitality Advisors LLC, a Honolulu-based hotel industry consulting firm.
The greatest monthly decline last month was in the number of visitors from Japan. The state reported 67,440 arrivals in October 2001 — a 54 percent drop from last October's 146,880.
Vericella said the number of visitors from Japan is expected to bottom-out this month and begin to improve in December, with the Honolulu Marathon bringing close to 9,000 runners from Japan.
By the first quarter next year, Japanese visitor arrivals are projected to improve to within 25 to 35 percent of the first quarter of this year, he said.
While it may take a while for travel from Japan to rebound, Mainland travel to Hawai'i already has showed signs of returning, Vericella said.
He said domestic travel for the fourth quarter of this year should be within 85 to 90 percent of last year's totals. The projections for the first quarter of 2002 show domestic travel to be about the same as the first quarter of 2001, Vericella said.
All of the islands have felt the effects of the downturn, with O'ahu the hardest hit. Visitor arrivals were down 31 percent on O'ahu in October, followed by 30 percent on Maui. The Big Island saw a 22 percent drop, Kaua'i 22 percent, followed by Lana'i at 20 percent and Moloka'i at 9.6 percent.
This year, 5.4 million visitors have visited Hawai'i — a drop of 6.8 percent, or about 398,000 fewer — compared with the same time last year.
Tourism officials are hoping the $10 million approved by the Legislature as part of a six-month, $15 million emergency tourism marketing campaign will help spur travel demand to the state.
The campaign will put $8 million into the top 20 U.S. and Canadian markets — $5 million in the fourth quarter of this year, and $3 million in the first quarter of next. In Japan, it will spend $7 million in Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya.
