The holiday rush is back this year with travelers nationwide expected to catch planes for Thanksgiving and the festive season in numbers not seen in years — although Hawaii’s visitor industry reports that fewer visitors are headed here for vacations.

Jack Richards, president and CEO of Pleasant Holidays, a travel wholesaler that sells 74 destinations worldwide, including Hawaii, said holiday airport arrivals are strong nationwide. He said they’ve been strong in Hawaii through this point in November, with domestic arrivals up 14.8% over the same period in 2019. But Richards said arrivals, which also include interisland travel and returning residents, do not necessarily tell the whole story.

“It’s not that people aren’t traveling. They just aren’t necessarily booking (vacation) packages to Hawaii,” he said.

Richards said some travelers are staying closing to home; others are electing to stay with friends and family in Hawaii instead of booking trips or making lodging reservations. Some are choosing to travel to other destinations that were closed during the earlier part of the pandemic.

“This is one of the weakest festive seasons in Hawaii that we’ve seen — we’re tracking down 35% in 2022 from where we were during the festive period in 2019,” Richards said. “In comparison, the festive season during the same period is up 25% for the Caribbean, 49% for Mexico and 64% for Europe. It’s even up 2% for the mainland.”

Jerry Gibson, who leads the Hawaii Hotel Alliance, described Hawaii’s booking pace as “not great” for the rest of the calendar year, with some of the softness expected to carry into 2023. Gibson said other than at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the last time he recalls such a dismal festive season was during the 2007-2008 financial crisis.

“We don’t expect the clock is going to chime on Jan. 1 and all of the sudden we’ll be robust,” Gibson said, adding, “Pent-up demand from the U.S. has certainly waned with the economy.”

The less than robust outlook for rebounding arrival figures applies to international travel, too. “At this rate we’ll be lucky if we’re back to 50% of the Japan market by the second quarter of next year. We’d also like to see more travelers from New Zealand and Australia.”

Hawaii’s visitor industry is now starting to remove festive season restrictions, such as requiring a particular length of stay for bookings, while adding value-added deals. On Tuesday the luxury Halekulani Hotel in Waikiki launched the “Halekulani Heavenly Indulgence” festive package, through which guests stay four nights and receive the fifth night free for reservations booked by Dec. 15 for stays from Sunday to Dec. 20, or Jan. 3 to March 31. Rooms at the Halekulani started at $635 per night Tuesday.

“The prices have been extremely high in Hawaii for months, and that’s the biggest issue,” Richards said, adding that the price per traveler per trip to Hawaii is up 32% over the same period in 2019.

“We are getting feedback that customers can go to the Caribbean or Mexico and book an all-inclusive package with drinks and food for less money than their stay in Hawaii,” he said. “Europe has reopened. and it’s perceived as a bargain with the euro trading at parity with the U.S. dollar.”

Additionally, Richards said, travelers are complaining about the state putting in fees to visit various attractions, as well as issues like beach erosion at popular Maui beaches in Kaanapali.

Keith Vieira, principal of KV & Associates, Hospitality Consulting, said another reason for the softening is that Hawaii isn’t marketing as aggressively as other destinations due to the Hawaii Tourism Authority’s pivot to destination management. He said problems with the procurement for HTA’s top U.S. tourism contract also have interrupted marketing momentum and made long-term planning difficult.

“The malama campaign is a good campaign, but it can’t be your only campaign,” he said. “It’s all about being welcomed. That’s the reason our visitors come. They are hearing stories about Hawaii wanting to charge green fees or cutting back on the number of visitors, and they don’t think it’s a positive message. They are looking to go other places.”

Vieira said it doesn’t help that Hawaii also has the nation’s highest visitor taxes or that international visitor markets, especially Japan, are still down. He praised Gov.-elect Josh Green and his wife, Jaime Green, for traveling to Japan earlier this month to meet with government officials and travel industry partners to promote travel and business between Hawaii and Japan. “It was good that he went to Japan right away, but it’s going to take a lot more than one trip,” he said.

Richards said the holiday deals have likely come too late to bump up Hawaii’s Thanksgiving traffic. The hope is that the festive season, which is still roughly 30 days out, will bring additional pickup.

“There are seats available, so there could be a last- minute surge,” Gibson said. “I don’t know that we are expecting it. But it could happen, and we could do better than we expect.”

Nationwide, a holiday surge is underway in airport travel. The Transportation Security Administration already had screened more than 2.6 million travelers nationwide Monday, surpassing the 2.5 million screened the Monday before Thanksgiving in 2019.

The busiest day in TSA’s history came on the Sunday after Thanksgiving in 2019, when nearly 2.9 million people were screened at airport checkpoints.

Daniel K. Inouye International Airport was hopping Tuesday, the same day that the state Department of Transportation’s Airports Division put out an alert for travelers warning of limited parking at the five busiest airports across the state during the holiday season due to an anticipated increase in airline passengers.

DOT spokesman Jai Cunningham said the Honolulu airport was so busy Tuesday that by midday there were only three parking stalls available in the Interisland Parking Structure, which has 1,700 spots. “In Honolulu we have new electronic signs that show how many open stalls are available in each of the three structures,” Cunningham said.

Altogether, the Honolulu airport has 5,329 parking stalls, he said, adding that interisland parkers can access additional stalls in the International Parking Structure from a sixth-floor bridge.

Cunningham said Kahului Airport, Ellison Onizuka Kona International Airport at Keahole, Hilo International Airport and Lihue Airport also are expected to be busy.

The DOT is advising travelers to show up at least two hours in advance of interisland flights and up to three hours in advance of a mainland or international flight. Cunningham also advised those departing from Honolulu airports to consider getting dropped off so they don’t have to brave parking, he said. “We actually think our busiest day this week will be Wednesday because of interisland travel,” he said. “Monday is likely to be really busy, too.”

Conditions were already busy enough prior to Tuesday that Hawaiian Airlines had deployed its Team Kokua, an employee volunteer program that assists travelers. Wendy Izawa, who normally works in Hawaiian’s IT department, said she took a volunteer shift Tuesday to assist customers with check-in. “They want to know where to go, where to drop off their bags and how to get through the check-in kiosk,” she said. “I’m assisting them get in the right lines because we have domestic and interisland routes.”

Brandon and Lindsey Pyne of Dover, Del., managed to get in the wrong line Tuesday. However, the couple, who were on their third pre-Thanksgiving trip to Hawaii in a row, said that they weren’t nervous because they had allotted plenty of check-in time.

“It was empty when we came in 2020. Last year the airport was about as busy as it is now,” Brandon Pyne said. “It’s probably a little busier this year, but it hasn’t been too bad.”

Charles Sun, who was traveling back home to Los Angeles with wife Christy Xu and children Laurie, 8, and Livia, 6, said the airport experience was better this time around than on a previous trip nine years ago. “It’s OK. Everything went really fast and smooth,” Sun said. “Before, the terminal and the parking structure was old. There have been improvements.”

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The Associated Press contributed to this story.