A quarter of air travelers arriving in Hawaii on Saturday were visitors

The daily visitor arrivals to Hawaii increased Saturday from the day before to 481, but comprised a smaller portion of incoming air passengers, according to the Hawaii Tourism Authority.

HTA said today that about 25% of the 1,930 passengers who arrived Saturday in Hawaii on 25 flights were visitors. On previous days this month, the percentage of air travelers who were visitors climbed to more than 30%. On Friday, 333 visitors arrived in the islands.

For the month of June, an average of 460 visitor have been arriving daily in Hawaii. Saturday saw 481 visitors arrive in the islands as well as 683 returning residents, 231 crew members, 210 people traveling on to other destinations, 170 military members, 93 people relocating to Hawaii, and 62 people who were exempt from the travel quarantine.

Visitor arrivals have fallen since Gov. David Ige ordered all travelers coming into Hawaii to quarantine for 14-days on March 26. The quarantine has been extended to July 31 and essentially wiped out tourism to stop the spread of the coronavirus in Hawaii.

At this time last year, 35,000 passengers, most of them visitors, were arriving in Hawaii daily, the HTA said.

Oahu received the bulk — about 416 — of the visitors, while 30 went to the Big Island, 18 were bound for Kauai, and 17 landed on Maui.

Of those that arrived on Oahu, about 61% — or 253 — said on a mandatory travel declaration form that they were coming to Hawaii to visit family and friends. About 9% — or 36 — said they were traveling for business and about 13% — or 52 travelers — said they were flying for vacation. Twelve did not answer the question and the remainder chose more than one reason for the purpose of their visit.