Hawai'i's tourism slump continued last month with the sixth consecutive double-digit decline in visitor arrivals.

The number of visitors arriving in Hawai'i by airplane and cruise ship fell to 496,877 in November, a 15.9 percent decrease from the same month a year earlier, according to figures released yesterday by the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism.

Visitor spending by those who arrived by air dropped 15.3 percent to $805.3 million. And average daily visitor spending fell to $180 per person in November from $186 per person a year earlier.

Total visitor days for air and cruise visitors in November fell 12.5 percent from the same month last year. The average length of stay by these visitors was slightly longer at 9.23 days, compared with 8.87 days last November.

Among the top four visitor markets, air arrivals from the U.S. West dropped 18 percent while U.S. East arrivals were down 14.4 percent compared with November 2007.

Japanese arrivals fell 20.3 percent while arrivals by air from Canada declined 7.1 percent from last November. The yen continues to strengthen against the dollar, which tourism industry officials hope will eventually prompt more Japanese visitors to travel to Hawai'i. The yen is up nearly 20 percent against the dollar since August. The dollar dropped below the 90-yen threshold this week, closing at 89.31 yen in trading yesterday.

Nonetheless, Japan Airlines is projecting it will have 11.4 percent fewer seats available on flights to Hawai'i between Dec. 26 and Jan. 4 as it projects an overall decline in passengers and flights for the New Year's period.

Japan Airlines said international passenger reservations on its JAL Group totaled 54,385 for departures from Japan to Hawai'i, or about 8.9 percent less than the corresponding 2007 period.

Japan Airlines said the decline in traffic was attributable to the current global economic slowdown.

Through the first 11 months of this year, spending by visitors who arrived totaled $10.4 billion, down 8.5 percent from the same period a year earlier.

In terms of year-over-year percent comparisons of visitor arrivals, there have been other months that have been lower than November 2008, officials said. But the only November that dropped lower was in 2001 — when the percentage of visitors arriving by air plunged to 26.9 percent in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.

State tourism liaison Marsha Wienert said a major blow to the local tourism industry has been this year's withdrawal of two Norwegian Cruise Line ships from the Hawai'i cruise market.

The declining cruise market has affected the Neighbor Islands more than O'ahu. Wienert said "50.2 percent of Hawai'i Island's, 45.9 percent of Kaua'i's, 32.4 percent of Maui's and 20.6 percent of O'ahu's decline in arrivals were due to decreased cruise visitor counts."

Wienert noted a bump up in the number of visitors who came for meetings, conventions and incentives, which increased 6.3 percent. She credited a big part of that to the Sweet Adelines International Convention "which attracted close to 7,500 female barbershop harmony singers to the Islands."

All U.S. Mainland regions showed double-digit declines in visitor arrivals in November 2008 compared with the same month last year. And industry officials have been focusing a special marketing effort on those traditionally strong sources of Hawai'i travelers.

Arrivals from the two largest regional markets, Pacific and Mountain were down 17.7 percent and 21.2 percent, respectively.

Timeshare properties continued to buck that trend in showing more increases. In November 2008 a higher percentage of U.S. West visitors stayed in timeshare properties — 16.6 percent of all U.S. West visitors — compared to the same month last year.