Tourism numbers miss HTA goals

It looks like 2015 tourism is off to a slow start, with arrivals and spending below targets.

Although visitor arrivals came back in February, the Hawaii Tourism Authority reported Wednesday that total visitor spending continued trending down, dropping by 4.3 percent from a year ago to $1.2 billion. Average daily spending also dropped by 6.4 percent to $194 per person.

At the same time, total visitor arrivals to Hawaii rose 2.3 percent year-over-year to 661,747 travelers, according to preliminary statistics released by HTA. That was partially due to 4.9 percent more air seats, which rose to 888,944.

"Even though expenditures were down, we were still busier than we were at this time last year," said Daniel Nahoopii, HTA’s director of tourism research.

February’s results brought year-to-date visitor arrivals to 1,340,617, which was 0.8 percent higher than the same period in 2014. However, total year-to-date visitor expenditures fell 3.3 percent to $2.6 billion. As a result, year-to-date performance fell short of 2015 goals set by HTA last month.

Arrivals came in 2.8 percent below the nearly 1.38 million target for the first two months of the year and spending was 8.5 percent lower than the goal. Daily spending also fell 5.5 percent short of the $204.60 goal.

The mix of February visitors, which was 64 percent domestic, and their habits contributed to the spending declines. Overall, nearly 68 percent of those who came to Hawaii in February were repeat visitors, and thus more likely to shun hotels in favor of other lodging.

"Repeat travelers tend to spend less on their Hawaii vacations and they like to branch out beyond the hotels in the tourism districts," Nahoopii said.

The number of visitors who planned to stay exclusively in hotels declined 1.4 percent to 348,857 in February. At the same time, the number of people who planned to stay in a bed & breakfast rose 33.4 percent to 10,413 and those staying in a category that includes home-based vacation rentals rose 46.8 percent to 11,639.

"These choices also reflect that we had fewer travelers coming for meetings, incentives and conventions or traveling in leisure groups," Nahoopii said.

Also contributing to February spending declines was the higher percentage of visitors from Hawaii’s core U.S. West market relative to higher-spending markets like the U.S. East and Japan. U.S. West arrivals grew 8.8 percent to 242,601 visitors in February. However, their overall spending was flat at $373.1 million because daily spending dropped 5.3 percent to $164 per person and they stayed here for less time.

For the U.S. East market, arrivals by air fell 3.4 percent to 138,822 visitors. Daily spending declined 11.8 percent to $191 per person, resulting in a 13.7 percent drop in expenditures, which fell to $287.8 million.

Arrivals from Japan also dropped 3.5 percent to 120,511 visitors. Daily spending declined 11.3 percent to $254 per person, contributing to a 14.2 percent decrease in visitor expenditures to $174.9 million.

The Canadian snowbird visitor population, which tends to make long winter stays in Hawaii, also declined 1.5 percent to 65,255 visitors. However, daily spending increased 3 percent to $176 per person and visitors stayed longer, leading to 3.8 percent growth in visitor expenditures to $154.1 million.

Drops from these important markets could not be offset by gains from other international markets, most which were negatively impacted by the strengthening of the U.S. dollar. But there was a 13.1 percent rise in visitor arrivals from the category "all others," which includes visitors from Oceania, Europe, Latin America and Asian nations outside Japan.