Hawaii still on a hot streak

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

It was the 14th consecutive month that visitor arrivals outperformed the same month the year before. April arrivals totaled 700,573, up 3.4 percent from April 2015. In the first four months of 2016, total visitor arrivals were up 3.5 percent to 2.9 million, according to preliminary statistics released Thursday 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.”

In the first four months of 2016, visitor expenditures were up 1.8 percent to $5.1 billion, surpassing the same period last year.

“The visitor statistics year-to-date show that Hawaii remains ahead of last year’s record-setting pace for both arrivals and expenditures,” Szigeti said. “This is encouraging news for our tourism industry.”

Still, visitor spending was down. Tourists spent a total of $1.1 billion in April, down 1.1 percent from the same month the year prior.

“Visitor expenditures are the main indicator for economic impact,” said Eugene Tian, chief economist for the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism. “The decrease in visitor spending means a smaller state tax revenue and lower income derived from the visitor industry. Part of the decrease in spending can be attributed to the strong dollar and depreciation of foreign currency. Daily spending decreased for all the foreign visitors.”

For the Japan market, daily spending was down 5.3 percent in April. Visitor expenditures declined from Canada by 15.5 percent to $74.4 million and from other international markets by 7.1 percent to $241.2 million.

While daily spending was lower for Hawaii’s international visitors, the number of international visitors arriving by air was up 6 percent to 218,487 — a major driver for the growth in total visitor arrivals in April.

Keith Vieira, principal at KV & Associates Hospitality Consulting LLC, said one factor that helped increase international travel was the growing number of direct flights to Hawaii.

Vieira said that as Hawaiian Airlines and others have added more direct flights, the extra three or four hours docked from potential visitors’ travel time only adds to Hawaii’s appeal.

“We have too many attributes that make it interesting, if you can take away the ridiculous air time and changeovers,” Vieira said. “If you put Hawaii in front of visitors, offering them an effective way to get here, they are are always going to choose Hawaii.”

Air visitor arrivals inched up 1.8 percent to 677,671 compared with April 2015.

Tian said the growth exceeded what the state planned.

“The 1.8 percent growth in air visitors is a healthy growth rate and is above the long-term growth we expected at 1 percent,” he said.

The growth was driven by an increase 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, growth in arrivals from Japan 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.

Vieira said he saw stronger numbers for groups coming to the state for corporate meetings, sports teams and visitors coming for spring break.

Visitor arrivals increased for Oahu and Maui in April compared with last year, growing 2 percent and 4.5 percent respectively. However, visitor expenditures declined on both islands. On Oahu spending declined 5.8 percent; on Maui it declined 2.8 percent. Hawaii island had a small growth in arrivals — 0.8 percent — with a 13.1 percent gain in visitor expenditures. Arrivals to Kauai were unchanged while visitor ex- penditures increased 6.2 percent in April year-over-year.