Raise prices and expectations soar, too. So it’s little surprise that visitors who are paying more for their vacations are also finding more to gripe about. Still, that the Hawaii Tourism Authority’s annual Spring Marketing Update regarding visitor satisfaction was predictable makes it no less troubling.

Most alarming: Only 62 percent of visitors from Japan rated their most recent trip to Hawaii as excellent, down 12.7 percent from the previous survey. Visitors from Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the eastern United States also were less pleased with their experience, although none of the percentage drops for those groups reached the double digits. The overall percentage of visitors who rated their vacations as excellent dropped 2 percent, to 78.5 percent.

The findings demand a comprehensive and sustained response from airlines, car rental companies, hotels, restaurants and other businesses that cater to tourists — a response that brings customer service to the level that international visitors, especially, have come to expect.

The stakes are very high, as the tourism industry finds itself in "a very delicate situation" after three record-setting years. That’s the assessment of David Uchiyama, HTA’s vice president of brand management, who warns that the drop in visitor satisfaction, coupled with rising prices and unfavorable currency exchange rates, could deter enough prospective travelers that the industry misses its aggressive targets for 2015.

The goal is to welcome a total of 8.6 million visitors to the islands this year, who would spend $15.58 billion, slightly better than 2014’s take.

But with a rising number of tourists reporting negative perceptions, another record-setter is far from assured. The mounting complaints conveyed distress over everything from dirty hotel rooms, to long waits at check-in counters, to tardy tour buses and unfriendly staff.

That’s a diverse set of issues, to be sure, but the human element is embedded throughout — service-industry workers who are tasked with an increasingly heavy workload as more tourists arrive year after year. Clearly, better employee-training programs are needed to ensure that staff know how to politely and properly address customers from all over the world — who carry their own, varying cultural and financial customs and expectations with them.

But given the broad scope of the declines in visitor satisfaction, counted among domestic and international visitors alike, businesses that cater to tourists should reassess whether they even have enough workers on the job to ensure that visitors have a pleasant experience. The industrywide movement toward self-service and away from helpful amenities has its limits, even in the budget-travel sector.

Uchiyama rightly notes that the decline in customer satisfaction reflects a combination of pricing and service. "We are increasing our product price points without necessarily compensating the visitor with an additional experience. When vacation costs go up, so do expectations," he told the industry stakeholders gathered for the HTA update at the Hawaii Convention Center last week. "They need to feel like they are getting good value for what they are spending."

Hawaii is already one of the most expensive places for tourists to visit, so excellent customer service from well-trained employees who have the capacity to do their jobs well is essential if visitors are to depart with happy memories.

A destination famed for its Aloha Spirit simply can’t afford to skimp on that.