To no one's surprise, the Maui island hotel occupancy rate dived in July, to 67.8 percent, according to the Flash Report from Hospitality Advisors, The Maui News reported today.

It had been 80.3 percent in July 2007.

Craig Anderson, general manager at the Westin Maui Resort at Kaanapali, said his advance reservations show no indication of an uptick this year, and not even during the normally busy holiday weeks and early part of the new year.

Final numbers are not out for August but preliminary numbers are low again, and September is a "shoulder month" - a natural slump that comes with families getting children back to school - so numbers can be counted on to continue to be low.

A combination of high airfares, fewer flights and, especially, an overall decline in consumer confidence is hitting the island's visitor industry.

Oahu actually gained a tiny fraction in occupancy in July, to 81.8 percent. The Neighbor Islands were most affected, and Maui and the Big Island especially by the shutdown of Aloha and ATA airlines, which accounted for 15 percent of the seats from the Mainland.

Those two carriers had a disproportionate share of the Maui and Big Island seats, Anderson said. The fact that the price of oil drove up ticket prices, in some cases to double what they had been a year earlier, just compounded the problem.

Summer is a family vacation time on Maui, he said, and while honeymooners might scrape up the extra money for "what you hope is a once-in-a-lifetime experience," families faced with buying several tickets were deterred.

Apparently, even honeymooners were deterred, because the report prepared by Smith Travel Research found that segment down 24.2 percent.

The high end of the market was most affected, impacting the Neighbor Islands where the high-end resorts are concentrated. Wailea, the state's most expensive destination resort, saw occupancy drop from 76.5 percent to 67.2 percent.

Numbers in the high 60s would not be considered too bad in most hotel markets on the Mainland, but Hawaii resorts in general and Maui resorts in particular are used to, and to some extent require, higher occupancy rates.

Anderson said Hawaii resort costs "are where they are because of the services we deliver."

Because of that, local hoteliers would like Hawaii residents planning a vacation to consider isle resorts a bargain - without the cost of overseas airfares. That's even more so now, because of deals being offered in response of lower levels of activity.

"This is a great time for kamaaina to escape for the weekend to their favorite resort and get great prices," he said.

Hoteliers are leery about reducing posted rates, having learned that it is hard to get them back up when traffic improves.

"There is a point of diminishing returns," Anderson said, where the increased head count attracted by the lower rates fails to cover the loss of revenue from lower charges.

That appears to have been the thinking on Maui in July, where the average daily posted rack went up to $293.39. That was an increase of only 71 cents over the record busy July of 2007, but it was an increase.

However, the dearth of bodies meant that revenue per available room (RevPAR) at Maui island resorts tumbled $36 to $199.

Oahu, even more of a family resort in summer than Maui, shows what happens when everything holds steady. Occupancy dropped only 0.3 percentage points, hoteliers raised their rack rates by about a dollar to $177, and RevPAR rose about $1.60 to $145.

At the other end of the scale, Hawaii island always trails in the statistics. Last year, when the rest of the state was enjoying occupancies in the 80s, Hawaii rose only to 75.2 percent. This year, it was the only county to drop below 60 percent, to 58.6 percent. Hoteliers, as in the rest of the state, resisted price reductions, so RevPAR took a giant tumble of $33 to $120.

Despite the contribution of pricey Kohala rooms, Hawaii County RevPAR was much lower than Waikiki with its wealth of budget and economy rooms.

Kauai, despite its high proportion of time-share rooms, which are supposed to be less affected by downturns (because they are already paid for), did just as poorly, dropping from 86.2 percent occupancy to 75.1 percent. Kauai operators raised their rates in the face of the downturn, by $7 to $222 a night, but it didn't work. RevPAR dropped $20 to $167.

For the state as a whole, RevPAR dropped $15 to $157.

"With such weakness during our traditionally high summer season, we will likely see a very sharp drop for 2008 when compared to last year," said Joseph Toy, president of Hospitality Advisors. "The fall shoulder season also looks troubling with a lot of uncertainty for the first quarter of 2009."

September is a good month for hotel workers to take vacation, Anderson said, and this year is no different.

"Clean out the garage, go fishing," is his advice.

* Harry Eagar can be reached at heagar@mauinews.com.