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Please don’t focus on visitor arrivals when you report tourism statistics (“Hawaii arrivals hit 9.25M in spite of Japan drop-off,” Star-Advertiser, Jan. 31). They can mislead, and there are better measures of both tourism “benefit” and of “burden.”
The best rough measure of benefit is spending. We can have the same number of arrivals as the year before, but if visitors spend more, benefits go up. Vice versa if they spend less.
The latest numbers show inflation-adjusted statewide average daily spending started rising in 2022 for the first time since 2011. It reached 97% of the 2019 level, despite the near-absence of some of our highest-spending (international) visitors. Yay!
The best rough measure of burden is average daily visitor count. We can have the same number of arrivals as last year, but if visitors stay more days, the use of our resources increases.
The 2022 visitor arrival count was 10.6% less than in 2019 but daily visitor count was down just 5.5%, so visitor arrivals understate “burden.” Also, while population estimates may get revised, daily visitor counts as a percentage of resident population was 16.1%, a number exceeded only in 2018 and 2019. Boo!
John Knox
Waimanalo
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