January tourism down 16 percent
Advertiser Staff and News Services
The delay of the NFL's Pro Bowl contributed to a sharp drop in visitors to Hawai'i last month compared with a year earlier, but the annual all-star football game should help boost this month's figures, state tourism officials said yesterday.
A total of 463,357 visitors came to the Islands in January, down about 16 percent from 554,710 the same month of 2001, according to data released by the state Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism.
The Pro Bowl was delayed until Feb. 9 because of events triggered by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, which pushed back the NFL's regular season, playoffs and the Super Bowl. Last year the Pro Bowl was played Feb. 4, a week after the Super Bowl.
In previous years, visitors arrived toward the end of January to take part in Pro Bowl activities, the state said.
Still, Pearl Imada Iboshi of the Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism said she was encouraged by the January numbers and expects February to be very strong relative to last year.
Early results from the first half of the month show domestic visitor arrivals exceeding those of February 2001.
"We should see an improvement in visitor numbers in February, as approximately 25,000 visitors came to Hawai'i for the Pro Bowl game this year," said Seiji Naya, director of the department.
The first 20 days of February saw a 1.9 percent increase in domestic arrivals, the department said.
The Pro Bowl brought Hawai'i about $40 million in direct visitor spending, the department said. The state pays the NFL $4.75 million to be host of the Pro Bowl.
Eugene Tian, an economist with the department, said that even if the game were played in its originally scheduled week, it would not account for the dramatic drop-off in foreign arrivals.
International arrivals, mostly from Japan, fell 28.8 percent to 156,798 last month from 220,213 in January 2001.
"I think they're not very confident in flying," Tian said of visitors from Japan.
But the decline in the lucrative foreign traveler numbers is an improvement over the months immediately following Sept. 11, when arrivals dropped nearly 60 percent.
Japan Airlines, which cut its flights to Hawai'i by 23 percent in October, recently announced it would start adding flights, with the expectation of reaching pre-Sept. 11 levels by summer.
"January visitor numbers reflect the continuing improvement in visitor arrivals since the events of September 11th," Naya said.
At a meeting of the Hawaii Tourism Authority yesterday, JAL officials said that by spring the airline would reinstate all flights it canceled after Sept. 11, bringing weekly totals to 71 from the current 49.
The fact that JAL is doing this now, with competition looming from the World Cup soccer tournament in Seoul, South Korea, shows "that the market is really coming back," said tourism authority board member Gilbert Kimura.
Domestic arrivals dropped 8.4 percent in January, to 306,559 from 334,497 in the year-earlier month.
The number of vacationers coming to Hawai'i dropped 16.5 percent; honeymooners fell 18.9 percent; and meeting and convention attendees dropped 32.3 percent.
One bright spot in the January data was the average time spent in the Islands was up 4 percent over a year ago, to an average of 10.5 days.
