Airlines are expected to bring a record number of seats to Hawaii this year as the state heads for its fourth straight all-time high for visitor arrivals.
But carriers will pull back capacity in the first quarter, particularly from Japan, according to Chris Kam, senior director of market insights for the Hawaii Visitors & Convention Bureau.
Scheduled nonstop seats to the islands are projected to rise 5.9 percent this year to 11.8 million, but then rise only 2.3 percent in the first three months of 2016, Kam told business leaders Wednesday at the Pacific Asia Travel Association luncheon at the Hawaii Prince Hotel Waikiki.
“The good news on these 11.8 million seats is that the year-over-year growth for this calendar year has come from both the domestic and the international side,” said Kam, noting that about 70 percent of the capacity came from the U.S. “On the international front, the key international markets fueling this growth have been Canada, Oceania (Australia and New Zealand) and China.”
Kam said the domestic market will fuel overall capacity growth in the first quarter with seats from the U.S. scheduled to rise 4.1 percent, led by gains from San Francisco and Seattle. That follows a projected domestic increase this year of 8.1 percent and an international gain of 1.4 percent.
Next year’s domestic increase in the first quarter will be partly offset by a 1.3 percent decline in international capacity as Japan, the state’s top international market, continues to be hurt by a weak yen. International air seats from Japan are projected to fall 6.9 percent during the first quarter due to a pullback by Delta Air Lines in the Japan market and an aircraft reconfiguration to fewer seats by Japan Airlines. That’s a far worse pace than the 3.3 percent decline in Japan air seats expected for this year.
Kam said the international forecast, which is derived from an airline schedule database, actually will be slightly better than projected because flights from Jin Air, a low-cost Korean Air subsidiary that will begin flights between Seoul and Honolulu on Dec. 19, still are not showing up in the database.
“Once they do (start showing in the database), we’re talking about the addition of roughly 21,000 seats from Incheon (near Seoul) to Honolulu each quarter,” he said.
Canada air seats are expected to rise 7.6 percent in the first quarter after a 15.1 percent increase this year. Oceania is forecast to bring in 5 percent more air seats during the January-to-March period after a 16.4 percent gain in 2015. And air seats from other Asian regions, including China, Taiwan and South Korea, are expected to rise 3 percent during the first quarter — primarily driven by the China market — after falling 7.9 percent in 2015.
Kam said he met in Philadelphia last month with tourism forecasters across the country and the consensus is that 2015 growth rates have been rising a lot faster than international growth rates.
“(They’re) basically defying gravity,” he said. “In 2016 they’re thinking it’s the year that gravity starts to take hold again. So when does that happen and how much of a factor is it, we’ll just have to wait and see.”
