Maui tourism recovering more quickly than on Oahu

Oahu usually leads tourism recoveries, but not this time.

Maui is the island to watch with higher spending and nearly as many visitors per day as Oahu.

Maui is seeing strong gains in airlift. Its vacation rental supply is already back to pre-pandemic levels. Maui’s April hotel performance also topped the rest of the Hawaiian Islands.

Part of the reason is that international arrivals still haven’t returned in meaningful numbers to Oahu, which in more typical times is easily the state’s top travel market. Not so much now.

Spring break travel demand helped bring 484,071 mostly domestic arrivals to Hawaii in April, according to preliminary statistics released Thursday by the Hawaii Tourism Authority. As many as 471,336 of the visitors who came to Hawaii were from the U.S., with only 12,735 visitors coming from international destinations.

April visitor arrivals were more than 10,000 times better than April 2020, the worst month of the pandemic for travel. But even with the gains, last month was still 43% below April 2019, a pre-pandemic time when 849,397 visitors came to Hawaii.

Oahu visitor spending in April was still less than half of the $627 million that tourists brought to the state in April 2019. Maui’s expenditures in April almost reached 80% of the $394 million that it earned in April 2019.

On any given day in April, HTA estimates, there were 151,386 visitors statewide. Oahu had the highest daily census with 60,261 visitors on any given day. But Maui wasn’t far behind with a daily visitor census of 51,264.

In comparison, in April 2019 Oahu’s daily visitor census was 109,204 while Maui’s was 64,523.

A reason for the shift is that pandemic containment policies have skewed toward domestic arrivals. The U.S. trans-Pacific travel market is expected to come back so strongly this summer that carriers during each summer month have added more more than 1 million seats. That outpaces the seats that were available in the Hawaii market during the same period in 2019, which was the best year for Hawaii tourism ever.

Maui stands to benefit from these gains the most of any other Hawaiian Island as it has always had the largest mix of domestic travelers, which tend to make up more than 80% of its visitors.

Maui’s visitor industry is making adjustments to accommodate greater visitor demand.

Alaska Airline spokesman Daniel Chun said, “We have been gradually restoring our service to Maui, and as of last week, we have returned to pre-pandemic flight levels for the summer months. We are making significant investments in our Hawaii team and bolstering our hiring efforts throughout the state by increasing our starting wage by 16%, along with offering referral, retention and performance bonuses.”

Some of the other carriers that serve Maui already have surpassed pre-pandemic levels, and Maui was a key focus of Southwest Airline’s expansion plan.

Jon Snook, Hawaiian’s chief operating officer, said the carrier is offering a $2,000 sign-on bonus to attract experienced applicants for most jobs on Maui, which has rebounded faster than the rest of the state.

Erik Kloninger of Klonin­ger & Sims Consulting LLC said Maui’s popularity also has benefited its vacation rental industry, which is back to pre-pandemic levels.

“Maui has really been the leader in the post-pandemic rebound, which makes sense. Oahu is going to lag because of its dependence on international travelers,” he said.

The Safe Travels COVID-19 testing program has allowed U.S. domestic travelers to avoid Hawaii’s travel quarantine since Oct. 15. International travelers from Japan, Canada, Korea and Taiwan have been added to Safe Travels, but restrictions in some of their own countries remain a deterrent.

While Maui is leading what looks to be a better than expected statewide recovery, there’s reason for caution.

Maui’s rebound comes as a Maui County Council committee has passed a bill imposing a moratorium on building permits for visitor accommodations in West and South Maui, the county’s biggest tourist districts.

The return of tourists to Maui has reignited long-held concerns about over- tourism and the need for greater tourism management in pockets of the island. There have been more reports on Maui than any other island of conflicts between tourists and residents, who are increasingly questioning whether tourism provides more than it takes.

The proposed moratorium on new visitor accommodation construction aims to address the problems of excessive tourism and climate change, said the legislation’s introducer, committee Chairwoman Kelly King. Development would be suspended until community plans are updated or in two years, whichever is sooner.

The Climate Action, Resilience and Environment Committee approved the bill Tuesday by a 4-2 vote, The Maui News reported. The proposal now heads to the full Council.

The legislation aims to lower carbon emissions and limit global warming by pausing visitor accommodation development and the related increase in tourism. The moratorium would prevent additional air, noise, light, land and water pollution until community plans can be updated, supporters say.

Council Chairwoman Alice Lee and Councilwoman Yuki Lei Sugimura, the two dissenting votes, questioned how it would address climate change.

“How do you quantify these items … and distinguish those items as caused by visitors versus those items caused by residents whether new or old?” said Lee.

Sugimura asked how a ban on new visitor accommodations will result in not adding visitors.

“How do you stop visitors from coming?” she asked.

King said the pause will maintain a status quo while officials “look for solutions and receive information.” King said many moratoriums are adopted while waiting for data. “The bottom line is when you find yourself in a hole, the best thing to do is stop digging,” she said. “We have all recognized that we have over- tourism. We have all recognized that we have a climate emergency. We’ve passed resolutions to both of those that we need solutions for.”

The bill notes the Maui Island Plan calls for a daily visitor population that doesn’t exceed one-third of the resident population, yet in 2019 the daily visitor census stood at about 70,000 while the resident population was under 150,000.

“This bill maintains status quo and stops us from adding additional visitor accommodations until we can come up with solutions or we can figure out how we are going to lower that figure, the ratio of tourists to residents,” King said.

Visitor accommodations cover hotels, resorts, timeshares, short-term rental homes, bed-and-breakfast homes and vacation rentals.

Council Vice Chairwoman Keani Rawlins-Fernandez said she will soon introduce a similar moratorium bill covering the entire island.

———

The Associated Press contributed to this story.