Visits to Maui County in September were down by 27.3 percent from the year before. The total as low as 142,650 has not been seen since each of the five months following the September 2001 terrorist attacks, The Maui News reported today.

Before that, the first Gulf War period was the last time numbers had plunged so far.

Terryl Vencl, executive director of the Maui Visitors Bureau, said the statistics "just verify the lack of consumer confidence in spending money right now."

Total visitor spending in the county in September was down 23.1 percent to $187.3 million.

Statewide, the 461,000 who came represented a 19.5 percent decline, part of a 9.3 percent drop for the first nine months of 2008.

The numbers were released Monday by the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism. State Tourism Liaison Marsha Wienert said the results "reflect the continued national and global economic challenges that are affecting tourism worldwide."

The decline meant that Maui County saw about 40,000 fewer visitors than would have been expected at the beginning of the year for September - always a slow month anyway.

The percentage decline was about the same on the other Neighbor Islands, less on O'ahu. However, because O'ahu gets about twice as many tourists as Maui, the absolute decline in numbers on Oahu was greater - about 60,000.

O'ahu's September total of 294,328 was down by 20.6 percent. Kaua'i was down 29.2 percent to 70,600. The Big Island was down 31.5 percent to 78,826.

Worst affected of all was Moloka'i. It's head count of 4,641 was down 23.1 percent, but its revenue from tourism was down 31.2 percent to only $1.9 million. Lana'i got 5,532 visitors (down 21.6 percent), but it got more than three times as much money out of them - $6.6 million, which was down 14 percent.

Lana'i has the highest per-person per-day spending in the state, $349.

Per-person per-day spending was up substantially on both O'ahu ($209) and Kaua'i ($179) and down substantially on Maui ($179) and the Big Island ($137). Spending on Moloka'i averaged $127.

Vencl said the drop in overall business is "out of our hands" until the world's economic picture improves. In the meantime, she said: "We've got to keep top of mind. I do think it will turn around; I just simply don't know when."

She said mainly "we feel the pain of our residents. We've got to stay head-to-head with other destinations" in order to participate in the eventual rebound.

DBEDT said total spending in the islands for the first three quarters was down 7.4 percent, or $693 million, to a total of $8.7 billion.

Although the big hit came in April when two airlines folded, and the pace of the decline accelerated in August when world financial markets tottered, the state's visitor industry already was looking at a sharp drop because of the withdrawal of two Norwegian Cruise Line ships.

That affected Maui, but Wienert said it affected Kaua'i and Hawai'i even more, with 25,777 fewer people arriving either by ship or by air to meet a ship compared with September 2007.

Because the decline has accelerated, the drops in visitor-industry numbers for the first three quarters are smaller — head count down by 13.7 percent in Maui County, 9.6 percent on O'ahu, 17.9 percent on Kaua'i and 17.2 percent on the Big Island.

Among the top four visitor markets, September arrivals from the East Coast were down 26.2 percent. The DBEDT said that was the largest decrease for the market since September 2001.

Visitor arrivals from the largest market, the West Coast, dropped 21.5 percent.

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