Hawaii’s visitor count in August below pre-pandemic levels, but spending soars

Visitor arrivals to Hawaii in August continued to lag pre-pandemic times; however, visitor spending was up double-digits from the same period.

Some 829,699 visitors came to Hawaii in August, down more than 10% from August 2019, according to preliminary visitor statistics released today by the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism.

Visitor spending in August rose to more than $1.7 billion, an increase of 13.8% over August 2019.

There were actually more than 10% additional domestic visitor arrivals in Hawaii in August compared with August 2019, especially from the U.S. West. International visitor arrivals to Hawaii are recovering, but were still down in August compared with August 2019.

Only 28,384 visitors from Japan came to Hawaii in August. Arrivals from Japan, which is normally Hawaii’s largest source market for international visitors, were down 82.3% from August of 2019.

August’s visitors stayed an average of 9.07 days, up 7.1% from their average length of stay in August 2019.On any given day across the state in August, there were 242,692 visitors down 4% from the average daily visitor census in August of 2019.

Nearly 6.2 million visitors came to Hawaii through the first eight months of 2022, a 12.9% decrease from the same period in 2019. However, total visitor spending through August rose 6.8% to almost $12.9 billion.

DBEDT Director Mike McCartney said in a statement that Hawaii is on pace for a full recovery in 2025 with the return of international visitors.

He said DBEDT projects 9.2 million visitors for the entire 2022, representing 88.5% of the total visitor count in 2019, while generating $2.2 billion in state tax revenue and supporting 195,000 jobs.