January marked the 11th consecutive month that total visitor arrivals to the state have exceeded previous monthly records.

Some 720,997 visitors traveled to the Hawaiian Islands last month, up 6.2 percent compared with the same month last year, according to preliminary statistics released Thursday by the Hawaii Tourism Authority. About 239,844 visitors were in the islands on any given day.

“The best January ever in terms of total visitor arrivals pumped $1.5 billion into our economy and generated $155.6 million in state tax revenue to support services and programs in all of our communities,” said George Szigeti, HTA president and CEO.

January’s results have Hawaii headed in the right direction to reach HTA’s forecast of attracting 8.8 million visitors who spend $15.9 billion this year, according to the HTA’s Jennifer Chun. However, growth in visitor spending didn’t keep up with visitor arrivals. While arrivals surpassed HTA’s January target of 690,582, Chun said visitor spending came in at $1.46 billion, below the $1.49 billion target. Visitor expenditures increased from the U.S. West, U.S. East and all international markets except Canada and Japan. Per-person-per-day spending also was flat at $196, which was below the $201.6 target, Chun said.

While Hawaii’s overall visitor industry is forecast to achieve a fifth year of gains in visitor arrivals and visitor expenditures in 2016, not all segments are expected to realize growth. Barry Wallace, executive vice president of hospitality services for Outrigger Enterprises Group, said the hotel industry is off to a good start. However, Wallace expects changes in visitor spending patterns and an increase in available hotel rooms make it unlikely that hoteliers will attain better occupancies and rates this year than they did in 2015.

“On the hotel side, occupancies will probably be flat or down; you can’t get much better than the kind of occupancies than we’ve had. Also, many large properties rely on groups and Japan to fill their rooms, and both of those markets are soft, ” Wallace said.

Eugene Tian, economic research administrator for the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism, said economic slowing in most countries worldwide, particularly in some of those that Hawaii relies on as visitor source markets, will be a challenge for 2016. Tian spoke Feb. 3 at the Pacific Asia Travel Association’s 2016 Annual Outlook &Economic Forecast.

Paul Brewbaker, principal of TZ Economics, said during the PATA event that he expects U.S. real GDP growth will be good and that there will be settling from China and softness from Japan.

“Global asset price volatility now is weighing on investor confidence,” Brewbaker said.

Wallace said another challenge this year, especially for Oahu, the state’s busiest island, is that new hotel inventory will put pressure on hoteliers “up and down the food chain.”

The reopening of the former Ohana Waikiki West as the Hilton Garden Inn Waikiki this summer will add 623 rooms to Oahu’s midpriced hotel inventory. The May 27 opening of the Four Seasons Resort Oahu at Ko Olina will add 371 high-end rooms to the market. Likewise, Ritz-Carlton Residences Waikiki Beach is slated to open a 307-unit tower around the end of April.

“With the additional rooms and softness, we’ll probably see some discounting by some of the larger hotels. When that happens, everyone has to respond and all segments of the market are affected,” Wallace said.

Hawaii’s activities and attractions industries are likely to do better in 2016 than they did in 2015; however, they too might fail to realize a full arrivals bounty, said Toni Marie Davis, executive director of the Activities &Attractions Association of Hawaii Inc., who spoke at the PATA event.

“The numbers are fabulous and it’s very, very busy. But more visitors doesn’t necessarily mean more spending, especially since 75 percent of the visitors are repeat visitors,” Davis said.

Likewise, growth in vacation rental and timeshare customers has not been a boon for tourist spending, she said.

“New timeshare visitors may spend more than typical hotel guests because they feel like they have more to spend since they paid for the trip in advance. However, upon their return they often fall into the repeat visitor mode of ‘been there done that,’” Davis said. “Vacation rental visitors, except for those staying in higher-end homes, often are on more of a budget.”

Also, visitors in general are booking fewer paid activities, she said. Nearly a decade ago, Davis said, HTA statistics showed that the average visitor would book about three paid activities or attractions. Today most are booking two or fewer.

Tian said the visitor industry also will need to keep an eye on air seats in 2016 since Hawaii is an almost exclusively fly-to destination.

“Air seat growth is significantly slowing down and will lead to slowdowns in visitor industry growth,” he said.

According to HTA and DBEDT, total air seats for 2016 are projected to grow a scant 0.8 percent to 11.9 million. Given the outlook of air seats at the beginning of 2016, Tian said visitor arrivals by air might only increase to 8.56 million, a 0.3 percent increase from 2015.