While overall satisfaction among Hawaii visitors is high, fewer visitors from North America say they’re “very likely” to return in the next five years, according to the results of a state-commissioned survey.

The latest Visitor Satisfaction and Activity Survey ranks the cost of a trip to Hawaii as the top reason cited among visitors from the U.S. West, U.S. East and Canada who say they are not very likely to return in the next five years.

The desire to go someplace new as well as the perception that Hawaii was too expensive and a poor value were among the top factors not to return to Hawaii in all North American source markets that were part of the 2023 first-quarter survey. Some visitors also mentioned a perception that Hawaii was overcrowded or too commercialized.

The state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism hired Anthology Research to conduct the survey, using data from Jan. 12 to April 11. The firm surveyed 4,742 visitors from the U.S., Canada, Oceania, South Korea, China and Japan.

More than 60% of visitors surveyed from all markets indicated they were very likely to return to Hawaii in the next five years. However, the percentage who are very likely to return is still falling in some key Hawaii markets.

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 81.2%, a 1 percentage-point drop from the survey’s results in the first quarter of 2022. It marked the lowest score of U.S. visitors who were very likely to return since at least 2016.

Among U.S. East visitors, 65.2% of survey respondents said they would be very likely to return to Hawaii in the next five years. The percentage was down 1.4 percentage points from 66.6% in the first quarter of 2022, and was the lowest percentage of those very likely to return since the first quarter of 2020, which included the start of the pandemic.

Visitors from Canada, which has been Hawaii’s top international market since the pandemic, saw a greater drop than domestic visitors. The percentage of visitors from Canada who said they would be likely to return in the next five years fell to 66.4%, an 8.3 percentage- point drop from the first quarter of 2022.

There weren’t similar year-over-year VSAT comparisons for Japan, Oceania, South Korea and China. At the time of the survey, most international visitor markets had relaxed travel restrictions and quarantine requirements; however, there continued to be limited direct flights to Hawaii from Japan, South Korea and Oceania. There have been no direct flights between Hawaii and China since February 2020.

Given Hawaii’s dependence on domestic visitors and repeat travelers, such a decrease in North American travelers returning to Hawaii in five years could strain the state’s tourism performance.

DBEDT statistics show that more than 1.97 million visitors arrived in Hawaii by air 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 72.6% of the first-quarter visitor arrivals to Hawaii were repeat travelers.

Jerry Gibson, president of the Hawaii Hotel Alliance, said repeat guests “are the best guests for Hawaii because they are like an apostle to us. They go out and talk to 10 different people and say they love the destination. It’s really important that we concentrate on repeat guests and many hotels have repeat guest programs.”

The survey results come as Hawaii’s visitor industry continues to struggle to regain visitors from Japan, and arrivals from the U.S. are expected to soften. Though international markets outside of Japan have had a stronger recovery, they comprise far fewer visitor arrivals.

Gibson said hotels statewide are still seeing a “fairly slow pickup” for July and August, which are typically peak travel months for Hawaii.

Still, there were many positive developments in the VSAT survey, which Hawaii Tourism Authority President and CEO John De Fries attributed to the hospitality of local residents statewide.

De Fries said in a statement, “Clearly, the overriding message that is reflected in these survey results is that the people of Hawaii, from our tourism professionals to the kamaaina who engage with visitors on a daily basis, are the reasons why Hawaii continues to be such a favorite destination for travelers from around the world.”

Despite some softening in the percentage of repeat visitors who would be very likely to return to Hawaii in the next five years, overall visitors gave Hawaii high marks. Among survey respondents, 88.1% of U.S. West visitors; 88.8% of U.S. East visitors; 85.3% of visitors from Canada; 78.4% of visitors from Japan; 73.6% of visitors from Oceania; and 85.5% of visitors from South Korea rated their most recent trip to Hawaii as “excellent.”

Nine in 10 visitors surveyed from each major market said that Hawaii exceeded or met their expectations. Hawaii “exceeded expectations” for 41.4 % of visitors from the U.S. West; 52.6 % from the U.S. East; 46.4 % from Japan; 38.1 % from Canada; 38.6 % from Oceania; and 59.2 % from South Korea.

Chris Kam, president and COO of Honolulu-based Omnitrak, theorizes that months of inflation and higher Hawaii hotel costs have led to higher guest expectations.

“Basically people were willing to spend up for a while, but as they continue to spend increasing amounts of money to come and visit I think their expectations also went up,” Kam said. “If our ability to meet their expectations did not rise as much or worse if some of our product got degraded during the pandemic, then that’s a model that we don’t want to use. At the same time you are raising your prices, you also should be elevating your product experience.”

Gibson said Hawaii hotels are prioritizing guest satisfaction, especially after the disruption of the pandemic.

“Many of the resorts are redoing their hotels and redoing capital items to make the physical asset even better,” Gibson said, adding that there also is additional emphasis on telling the cultural stories of each property and prioritizing sustainability, including using locally sourced vegetables and fruits.

Gibson said the additional investment is good for visitors, but also for employees and the community.

Kam said there is a direct correlation between visitor satisfaction and resident sentiment.

“You have probably heard the saying, ‘It’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.’ We turned that around to ‘If it’s a nice place to live, people will want to visit,’” Kam said. “You have got to get quality of life of the residents in balance with the satisfaction of visitors in order to have a sustainable and regenerative model for tourism.”

Kam said Omnitrak is rolling out new national research on resident sentiment, which surveys the results of more than 144,000 Americans across the country, at the Travel and Tourism Research Association Annual International Conference, June 13-15, in St. Louis.

He said preliminary results show that Hawaii is toward the center of the national index for resident sentiment.

Kam said there’s room to improve resident sentiment in Hawaii, but “we’re not as bad as we think.”

TOP REASONS NOT TO RETURN

From the U.S. West:

1. Too expensive

2. Poor value

3. Want to go someplace new

4. Too crowded/congested

5. Too commercialized/overdeveloped

From the U.S. East:

1. Too expensive

2. Flight too long

3. Want to go someplace new

4. Poor value

5. Five years is too soon to revisit

From Canada:

1. Too expensive

2. Want to go someplace new

3. Poor value

4. Flight too long

5. Too commercialized/overdeveloped

Source: Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism, Hawaii Tourism Authority