Statewide hotel occupancy 71.8% full in October

By Kelly Yamanouchi
Advertiser Staff Writer

Hotel occupancy jumped 3 percentage points from a year ago to 71.8 percent in October as tourists from the Mainland continued to flow into the Islands.

Visitors from the Western United States, especially California, are staying longer in the Islands — up 2.9 percent in October — contributing to the higher occupancy.

Maui, Kaua'i and O'ahu saw improvements over a weak October last year, according to the figures released by Hospitality Advisors LLC. But tourism on the Big Island is still sluggish.

"People are still wanting to come to Hawai'i," said Rodney Ito, general manager at the Outrigger Waikoloa. But, "the Big Island pretty much falls in fourth place compared to the other islands."

Ito said the problem is the island doesn't benefit from steady time-share customers like Kaua'i and isn't as popular as Maui or O'ahu. And the Big Island is still suffering from Japanese business down 20 percent compared with last year, he said.

Hotels on Kaua'i were fullest at 82.9 percent occupancy on average, up from 75.6 percent last year. O'ahu hotels were 73.6 percent full, up from 69.4 percent a year earlier. Waikiki hotels showed improvement with a 74.9 percent occupancy rate, up 4.6 percentage points for the month.

Hotels on Maui had an average occupancy rate of 69.7 percent compared with last year's 66.7 percent.

Big Island occupancy was 61.7 percent, down from 65.2 percent a year earlier.

And every island except the Big Island had improvements in revenue per available room, a critical financial measure in the hotel industry.

Hoteliers statewide are working on increasing their revenue through higher hotel room rates. The average price of a room for a night at a hotel in Hawai'i increased to $134.76, up from $131.92 last October.

Midprice and budget hotels are driving the growth in the hotel industry's financial performance in Hawai'i, according to Joseph Toy, president of Hospitality Advisors LLC.

"After summer, we were sort of waiting for the usual bottom to fall out and it's been a little bit better than expected," said Perry Sorenson, chief operating officer for Outrigger Hotels & Resorts. "There's always room for improvement," he said, adding that he wouldn't call it a full recovery yet.

Sorenson said the improvement over last year is expected because "last October was a disaster," after the one-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"Anytime there's improvement over last year that's a note of encouragement. We have no idea how long it will last," Sorenson said. "I seem to see more and more Japanese here, so that's good news."

For the year through October, hotel occupancy was 72.9 percent, up from 70.4 percent in the same period last year. The average daily rate for the period was $144.04, up from $140.79 last year.

Preliminary statistics for November show a 1.6 percentage point increase to 67.9 percent hotel occupancy for the month.

Hospitality Advisors' survey results are based on an average of more than 160 properties reporting, representing about 50,300 rooms, or 75 percent of all lodging properties in the state with 20 rooms or more.

Reach Kelly Yamanouchi at 535-2470 or kyamanouchi@honoluluadvertiser.com.