Softer September visitor spending diluted summer gains

Monthly visitor arrivals grew in September, but spending dropped again after three months of gains.

Statewide September arrivals grew to 741,304, a nearly 4% rise from September 2018, according to preliminary data released Thursday by the Hawaii Tourism Authority. Hawaii’s core U.S. West market posted arrivals increases as did its top international market, Japan. Arrivals from the mature Canada market were flat. They declined from the U.S. East and the category called all others, which includes international markets outside of Japan and Canada.

Statewide spending in September dropped nearly 4% from September 2018 to just over $1.2 billion. On average, visitors spent nearly 5% less per day and more than 7% less per trip. U.S. West spending was up, but total expenditures fell from the U.S. East market and international markets.

Up until summer, spending had been falling every month since November. Now it’s falling again.

“I was expecting the second half of the year to have continued increase in momentum, but I’m not seeing it,” said Keith Vieira, principal of KV &Associates, Hospitality Consulting, “The booking pace has dropped a bit, and that’s concerning because it could impact next year. Spending is flat to down over 2018, which was a poor year.”

Vieira said he’s most concerned that softness has begun to emerge at a time when the year-over-year comparisons should work in this year’s favor. He also notes that the new emphasis on tourism management over tourism marketing is probably somewhat ill-timed.

“The community is concerned about Hawaii hosting 10 million visitors. I get that we have to respond to their concerns, but we’ve still got to go and drive business,” Vieira said. “Tourists come for the aloha, and I’m concerned with the amount of media on all the protests from TMT on Mauna Kea to the Kahuku wind farms to Sherwood Forest. There there are all these community tourism pledges. It just doesn’t seem very welcoming.”

September results were mixed across the islands. Arrivals were up but spending was down on Oahu and Molokai. Arrivals and spending were both up on Maui, Lanai and Hawaii island. Kauai experienced a significant decline in arrivals and an even sharper spending drop.

“The whole state depends on tourism. There needs to be a bigger effort to turn it around — especially on Kauai,” Vieira said.

John Monahan, president and CEO of the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau, said a recent two-week West Coast bus tour did a good job of promoting Hawaii island, which needed some help recovering from all of the negative publicity over last year’s extended eruption of Kilauea Volcano.

“There was tremendous participation. We had 33 partners representing 22 companies. We started in San Diego and made it all the way up to Seattle. We targeted to visit 550 customers; we actually hit 638,” Monahan said. “All in all it was a fabulous event.”

Generally, it wasn’t a September to remember for Hawaii’s visitor industry, but the results didn’t completely drag down summer’s performance, which was fairly robust given comparisons with a time last year when there was fallout from the flood-related Kuhio Highway shutdown on Kauai, the heightened eruption at Kilauea Volcano and foul weather from Hurricanes Lane and Olivia.

For the first nine months of the year, arrivals grew almost 6% to nearly 7.9 million. Spending declined to $13.3 billion, but the drop was only one-tenth of a percentage point.