Maui tops in visitor spending

By Shayna Coleon
Advertiser Staff Writer

Visitors to Maui spend the most per day — $178 per person — than visitors on other islands, according to a new survey of Hawai'i visitors and their Neighbor Island spending habits.

Visitors on Kaua'i ranked second at $162 per person a day, Big Island visitors came in at $151 and Moloka'i visitors spent $87 per person, according to the survey by the Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism.

Visitor expenditure data has been collected by the state for more than 50 years, but it is the first time the state has specifically surveyed out-of-state visitors and visiting Hawai'i residents departing from airports on Maui, Moloka'i, Kaua'i and the Big Island from January to June.

O'ahu data collection was not part of this survey, and the sample size from the Lana'i survey was too small to release, the department said.

The survey offers insight into the spending habits of the growing number of out-of-state visitors who are staying exclusively on the Neighbor Islands during their trips to the Islands.

A total of 17,817 questionnaires were collected from out-of-state visitors during the six-month period — 9,281 questionnaires were from Maui, 4,693 from Kaua'i, 3,591 from the Big Island and 252 from Moloka'i.

On Maui, 51.4 percent of visitors were from the West Coast, 34.5 percent were from the East Coast, 2.6 percent were from Canada and 0.9 percent were from Japan.

Nearly 82 percent of the respondents said they were in Maui for vacation, while 7.9 percent were on their honeymoons. The average length of stay by the Maui visitors was 8.48 days.

Visitors from the West and East Coasts of the United States, the state's top two markets, were the largest group who participated in the survey on each island.

Unlike the statewide expenditures tracked by the state economic agency, the neighbor island expenditure data does not include interisland airfare. Visitors staying overnight and longer were included in the survey.