Hawaii received good marks from visitors last year even though the number of people vacationing here declined, a new tourism report shows.

Roughly two-thirds of Mainland and Canadian visitors rated their trips here as excellent, according the report by the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism.

"The majority of visitors rated their most recent trip to Hawaii as excellent with very little fluctuation year-over-year," said the 2008 Visitor Satisfaction and Activity Report.

The state periodically measures visitor feedback, trying to guage how well the the industry is meeting expectations. The report notes high satisfaction can lead to return trips and people recommend vacations here to others.

A little more than half, or almost 54 percent of Japanese visitors, ranked their vacations here as excellent, while about seven out of every 10 visitors from Europe gave the rating.

On the other end of the spectrum, the percentage of people dissatisfied with visits here remained under 10 percent. Only 5.6 percent of Mainland visitors, the state's biggest market, said they weren't happy with trips here, or about the same as a year earlier.

The researchers also surveyed people on their likelihood of making a return trip or recommending the state as a vacation spot, which is a meaningful measure because of the importance of word-of-mouth advertising.

The survey found nearly 87 percent of U.S. visitors would very likely recommend Hawaii trips to friends or relatives, while almost three out of four Japanese vacationers said they would do the same.

In terms of coming back, 65 percent of U.S. travelers said they'd be very likely to do so. About half of the Japanese respondents indicated the same.