Tourism increasing slowly
By Susan Hooper
Advertiser Staff Writer
Visitors from the western U.S. Mainland continued to propel Hawai'i's tourism recovery in March, with the number of travelers from that region up 4.2 percent compared with the same month a year earlier, according to state figures released yesterday.
Overall, however, the number of visitors to the state was down 7.6 percent last month from March 2001, the state Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism reported yesterday, with the major markets of the eastern United States, Japan and Canada all showing declines in visitors as compared with the same month last year.
Still, state officials said the overall tally was encouraging because it continued a pattern of growth in the monthly number of visitors to the state since the Sept. 11 attacks.
"We are encouraged to see that the 9/11 impact is diminishing," said Seiji Naya, director of the business department. "Since the original shock, monthly visitor counts have consistently been improving. Our largest market, the U.S. West, has been doing well since last December. The U.S. West market provided about 37 percent of our total visitors in March."
The number of visitors from the eastern United States was off 7.5 percent in March compared with the year before, the business department said. And the average length of stay of East Coast visitors was off by 1.1 percent, compared with a decline of 0.9 percent in average length of stay for visitors from the western United States.
The Japanese market offered a mixed picture in March. The number of Japanese visitors was down by 18.3 percent from March 2001, while their average length of stay in Hawai'i was up by 1.3 percent.
Comparing island tourist travel, all islands except Moloka'i showed a loss of visitors last month compared with March 2001, state researchers found.
The number of visitors to O'ahu dropped 9.4 percent, to 372,951 visitors. On Kaua'i, the decrease was 9.1 percent, with a 5.0 percent decline on Maui, a 4.5 percent drop on Lana'i and a 3.6 percent decline on the Big Island.
On Moloka'i arrivals jumped 15.7 percent, to 8,143 visitors.
On the cruise-ship side, a total of seven cruise ships visited the Islands last month, carrying 19,308 passengers, state researchers said. That represents an increase in passengers of 18.3 percent over last March, when eight cruise ships toured the Islands carrying 16,327 passengers.
Looking at visitor characteristics in March, researchers found an increase of nearly 76 percent from March 2001 in visitors coming to Hawai'i for government and military business.
The number of those coming to attend school was up by 20.3 percent, while the number of those attending conventions rose 17.1 percent.
On the minus side, the March visitor arrivals showed a 42.1 percent drop in incentive travelers from March 2001, a 17.2 percent decline in honeymooners, a 15.1 percent drop in corporate meetings traffic and a 6.2 percent decline in those coming for vacations.
