Tourist arrivals up in November

Hawaii won’t top earlier projections of 10 million visitors this year, but is still expected to have record tourism.

There were more tourists visiting the islands year over year in November, with total arrivals up 4.3 percent to 781,990, according to the latest report released Thursday by the Hawaii Tourism Authority.

Tourism officials had forecast earlier this year that visitors would top 10 million, but arrivals would have to rise by 6.7 percent in both November and December to reach that mark, or by another million people.

So far this year Hawaii has seen about 9 million tourists, up by 500,000 from the 8.5 million at this time a year ago. The tourism industry had to overcome a long list of challenges this year to break last year’s record.

“It will be higher than 2017, that’s for sure. It should be around 9.9 million,” said state Economist Eugene Tian at the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism. “Even with all these things going on, visitors are still coming. It will be a record arrival year.”

Hawaii’s tourism woes began in April when parts of Kauai were plagued by flooding, followed by a massive eruption at Kilauea on Hawaii island. The market was also hit by Hurricane Lane and Tropical Storm Olivia and natural disasters that closed airports in Japan, a major tourist market for Hawaii. Tourism was also dampened by a 51-day strike in October involving 2,700 unionized hotel workers at five properties: the Sheraton Waikiki, Royal Hawaiian Hotel, Westin Moana Surfrider, Sheraton Princess Kaiulani and Sheraton Maui.

“We had a very solid first half of the year up until we started having natural disasters,” said Jennifer Chun, HTA’s director of tourism research. “Unfortunately, you would have thought it would impact only the island of Hawaii, but it ended up impacting the whole state. Everything was one after another and it impacted the markets. We were fairly resilient despite the natural disasters.”

While arrivals grew in November, spending was flat. Tourists spent $1.29 billion last month, about the same as a year ago. Average daily spending fell 3.2 percent to $193 per person.

Visitor spending from the U.S. West grew 6.5 percent to $533.1 million, 9.3 percent for the U.S. East to $292.3 million and 2.6 percent to $99.6 million from Canada. However, visitor spending was down 0.4 percent from Japan to $182.7 million and by 26.5 percent to $175.3 million from all other international markets.

Arrivals by air rose 4.1 percent to 770,126, and 21.1 percent to 11,864 for cruise ships.

There were more air arrivals from the U.S. West, up 11.3 percent, and U.S. East, which rose 7.5 percent. Japan arrivals increased 3.1 percent, while arrivals from Canada climbed 0.7 percent. But there were 19.7 percent fewer visitors from all other international markets.