April was record month for Hawaii visitor arrivals

Hawaii’s tourism industry continues to break records, as April drew more visitors than any previous April.

Visitor arrivals bumped up to 700,573 in April, up 3.4 percent from April 2015. Visitors spent a total of $1.1 billion down 1.1 percent from the year prior, according to preliminary statistics released today by the Hawaii Tourism Authority.

“Hawaii attracted its most visitors ever in April, primarily due to a convergence of two events that fell in our favor,” said George Szigeti, president and CEO of HTA. “The rescheduling of some cruises to arrive in April brought in an influx of visitors that would not have occurred otherwise, and we realized a spike in visitors from Japan the last week of April for the start of the Golden Week holidays.

The growth in visitor arrivals in April was boosted by international visitors arriving by air, up 6 percent to 218,487.

Total visitor arrivals by air increased 1.8 percent to 677,671. HTA said this was driven by growth in the number of Japanese visitors, Hawaii’s largest international market, up 4.5 percent from a year ago, to 100,512. Many of those visitors came during the last week of April for Golden Week, a run of four Japanese holidays in a week.

While daily spending by Japanese tourists was down 5.3 percent in April, growth in arrivals bumped up overall expenditures by 3.6 percent to $138.2 million.

The number of domestic visitors was slightly down as the number of U.S. West visitors dropped 0.5 percent to 294,264 and U.S. East fell 0.2 percent to 133,262.