The tourism industry got some good news today: January visitor arrivals rose 4.1 percent, over the same month last year, according to the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism.

Preliminary statistics released today show total visitor days for air and cruise visitors in January 2008 rose 7.5 percent compared to January 2007. Most of those or 584,394 arrived by air, up 4 percent from January 2007. This increase, combined with higher average daily spending ($178 per person from $177 per person in January 2007), elevated total air visitor expenditures by $84.1 million or 8.3 percent to $1.1 billion.

Among the top four visitor markets, arrivals from Canada jumped 27.7 percent, U.S. West (+3.9 percent) and U.S. East (+2.2 percent) air visitors also increased. But Japanese air arrivals continued to sag with a 5.2 percent decline compared to January 2007.

Total air visitor arrivals from all other geographic areas grew 13.3 percent.

View the full report at www.hawaii.gov/dbedt.