Hawaii tourism celebrated its best month ever for visitor arrivals in July, and those who came spent a little more than last year’s travelers, according to preliminary statistics released Tuesday by the Hawaii Tourism Authority.

The 835,417 visitors who came to Hawaii last month represented a 2.1 percent increase from July 2015. At the same time, visitor spending increased 1.5 percent year-over-year to $1.4 billion.

“It’s inspiring to see the second half of 2016 start with a new all-time record for monthly visitor arrivals,” HTA President and CEO George Szigeti said.

Arrivals by air grew from Hawaii’s core U.S. West market and from most international markets, but arrivals from the U.S. East were flat and decreased from Japan and Canada.

Spending increased from every major visitor market except Japan, which was flat, and the U.S. East, which declined.

The number of visitors, however, actually was more than reported as many came by military transport for the Rim of the Pacific exercise, known as RIMPAC, the world’s largest international maritime warfare exercise, held mostly in July.

“So we actually had more people than the arrival statistics would show. Their families came as well,” said Barry Wallace, executive vice president at Outrigger Enterprises Group, which has 32 properties in Hawaii.

However, in reality the increase was “just about the rate of inflation” and only marginally up by about 3 or 4 percent over the prior year, he said.

“It doesn’t really grow by leaps,” Wallace said. “At least for what we’re seeing, it’s definitely a record revenue year. It’s great spending, and what’s nice is the peak started a little earlier in June than in prior years and lasted further into August. It gave us a stronger summer overall than we expected.”

Valerie King, general manager of Sea Life Park, said the attraction’s visitor count was up year-over-year between 10 and 15 percent, while park revenue grew between 10 and 20 percent in July.

“We did have a record July in terms of attendants as well as in park spending,” she said. “We are seeing it continue through August. We don’t necessarily get affected the same way (as hotels) because we’re the last on the totem pole in terms of visitor spending. We’re projecting it to be over for the year.”

However, Kelly Sanders, general manager at the Sheraton Waikiki Hotel, said the industry is expecting a year-over-year softening in the fourth quarter.

“The fall of 2015 had some great citywide conventions that are not occurring in 2016, so the demand we experienced last year due to the compression of the groups in the market will need to be filled by more leisure guests,” he said in an email. “With Japan trending down this year, it will compound the issue we will face as we close out the year.”

Maui and Kauai saw gains in visitor spending and arrivals while Oahu saw arrivals flatten and spending decline slightly. Hawaii island arrivals also were flat, and spending declined slightly.

Total air capacity to the Hawaiian Islands grew slightly (0.7 percent) over last year to 1,105,181 seats in July 2016.

July results helped Hawaii attain positive performance results in the first seven months of 2016. Through July total visitor arrivals grew 2.5 percent to nearly 5.3 million visitors. Likewise, visitor expenditures through July rose 2.9 percent to $9.15 billion.