While overall satisfaction among Hawaii visitors has rebounded to pre-pandemic levels in key areas, fewer visitors from the state’s top U.S. market say they’re likely to return in the next five years, according to the results of a state- commissioned survey.
The latest Visitor Satisfaction and Activity Survey, released Thursday, ranks the the cost of a trip to Hawaii as the top reason cited among U.S. visitors who most likely would not return in the next five years. The desire to go someplace new ran a close second in the survey covering 2022’s first quarter.
The state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism hired Anthology Research to conduct the VSAT, from Jan. 1 to April 30. The firm surveyed 3,832 visitors from the U.S. and Canada, which was the sole international market with enough visitation to participate.
The percentage of visitors from the U.S. West — Hawaii’s top source of visitors — who said that they would be very likely to return in the next five years fell to 82.2%, a 4.1-percentage-point drop from the survey’s results in the first quarter of 2021. It marked the lowest score since 2016 regarding intention to return for the top visitor source.
Among U.S. East visitors, 66.6% of survey respondents said they would be very likely to return to Hawaii in the next five years — down 6.6 percentage points from 73.2% in the first quarter of 2021.
Given Hawaii’s dependence on domestic visitors and repeat travelers, such a decrease in U.S. visitors returning to Hawaii in five years could negatively affect the state’s tourism performance.
More than 1.9 million visitors arrived in Hawaii during this year’s first quarter, with those on domestic flights accounting for roughly 93% of Hawaii’s total visitors by air. And as many as 75% of the first-quarter visitor arrivals to Hawaii were repeat travelers.
Jack Richards, president and CEO of Pleasant Holidays LLC, said the decline in the desire to return to Hawaii is significant, and appears to have already led to softer bookings.
“Cost is probably not 100% of the key driver, but it probably accounts for the majority of it,” Richards said. “If we look at 2019 and compare it to 2022, the cost of a Hawaii vacation is up $700 per person. That’s a 33% increase over 2019. With the exception of Asia, that is the highest increase of any destination that we offer today.”
Pleasant sells vacation packages and cruises to Hawaii, Mexico, Costa Rica, Las Vegas, the Caribbean, Canada, the Maldives, Australia/New Zealand, Dubai, Colombia, Europe, Japan & Asia, Tahiti, Fiji and the Cook Islands.
From the first quarter of 2021 to the first quarter of 2022, DBEDT reported that the per-person trip cost for visitors from the U.S. West rose 15.8% to more than $1,937. During the same period, the state agency indicated that the per-person cost per trip for visitors from the U.S. East increased by 8.3% to more than $2,252.
Based on feedback from travelers and travel advisers, Richards said pricing is a growing concern.
“From mid-August on, bookings to Hawaii are really slowing down,” Richards said. “August is off almost 10% percent compared to 2019, and the entire summer is off almost 25%.”
From August to the end of the year, Richards said, Hawaii is “tracking below what we thought would have been a very robust year coming out of COVID and … removal of the restrictions.”
Richards said travelers to Hawaii this year are encountering higher transient accommodations taxes and paying more for airfare, hotel rooms, rental cars and virtually every other aspect of their vacation. He said some hotels have exacerbated the issue by increasing both parking and resort fees to as much as $40 a day.
“The prices to Hawaii aren’t sustainable,” Richards said. “They could get it before because there was so much pent-up demand, and a certain segment of the population would not travel internationally.”
Richards said Hawaii benefited for many months from international travel restrictions, which prompted more visitor travel to the the islands. However, he said Hawaii lost that advantage in mid-June when the U.S. lifted its COVID-19 testing mandate for international travelers.
For the first four months of this year, “Europe was down 40% from 2019 … but since the testing requirement came off, it’s only down 2% from 2019 and we expect it is going to be ahead 10% by the end of the year,” he said, adding, “I knew it would be bad for Hawaii when the test came off.”
Hawaii Hotel Alliance President Jerry Gibson said Hawaii’s hotel pricing is tied to demand, which has started to soften.
“Pricing follows demand, so we are seeing a little bit of elasticity already,” Gibson said. “We had a strong Fourth of July, but our immediate pace began slowing down a little bit in June, July and August.”
Gibson said July, which is usually one of the busiest times of the year for Hawaii hotels, is a bit softer by a few occupancy points than hoteliers would like. He said that trend is on track to continue into August and September.
“There are a couple of good reasons for the softness. We don’t have any Asia business — particularly, the Japanese business has not come back at all, really,” Gibson said. “We are still in the process, and we will be for a few years, of growing group business again. Sometimes groups book five to seven years out … and that circle got broken by the (COVID-19) virus. So we have a lot of work to do.”
Still, there were many positive developments in the VSAT survey, which showed overall satisfaction among visitors from Hawaii’s key markets had rebounded to pre-pandemic levels.
Hawaii Tourism Authority President and CEO John De Fries said in a statement that the state agency’s “approach to destination management places the community’s needs first and foremost.” Further, “We aim to foster the right balance in which Hawaii’s residents, natural resources and culture can thrive, and visitors can have a meaningful, enriching experience.”
Nine in 10 visitors surveyed from the U.S. West, U.S. East and Canada said they were very likely to recommend Hawaii to their friends and family.
Also, among survey respondents, 87.7% of U.S. West visitors, 89.2% of U.S. East visitors and 86.6% of visitors from Canada rated their most recent trip to Hawaii as “excellent.”
Hawaii outperformed expectations among many visitors, with 47.9% of U.S. West, 57.1% of U.S. East and 46.2% of Canadian visitors indicating their latest trip exceeded expectations. However, first-time visitors from U.S. West, U.S. East, and Canada all expressed greater satisfaction than repeat visitors.
TOP REASONS NOT TO RETURN
Many visitors to Hawaii cite these complaints:
From U.S. West
1. Too expensive
2. Want to go someplace new
3. Poor value
4. COVID-19
5. Too crowded/ congested
6. Too commercialized/ overdeveloped
7. Five years is too soon to revisit
8. Flight is too long
9. No compelling reason to return
From U.S. East
1. Too expensive
2. Want to go someplace new
3. Flight too long
4. Poor value
5. Five years is too soon
6. Too crowded/ congested
7. Too commercialized/ overdeveloped
8. Other financial obligations
The full results of the ongoing quarterly survey are available online at www.hawaiitourismauthority.org/research/visitor-satisfaction-and-activity.
Source: Hawaii Tourism Authority Visitor Satisfaction and Activity Survey Q1
