Hawaii’s hotel industry had pretty stable business in May compared with a year earlier, according to a survey report released Tuesday.

The report from the Hawaii Tourism Authority based on a survey by STR Inc. said hotel occupancy statewide ticked down 0.9 percentage point to 72.8% while the average daily room rate ticked up 1.5% to $347 in May compared with the same month in 2022.

Total hotel room revenue was $438.9 million, down just $300,000, or 0.1%, from $439.2 million in the same comparable period.

The slight decline for occupancy in May followed a 2-percentage-point decrease in April after gains in each of the first three months of this year when compared with 2022.

Average room rates have been higher every month this year compared with 2022, though the year-over-year difference has been shrinking each month from January to May.

Keith Vieira, principal of KV &Associates Hospitality Consulting LLC, said upcoming months for the industry don’t look better after the roughly flat results in May.

“The advance bookings are down,” he said. “It’s a concern.”

Vieira attributes some of the softness to not enough marketing of the destination stemming from HTA marketing contract difficulties and uncertainty over funding from the Legislature earlier this year.

“I think we’re seeing some of the effects of that,” he said.

Other visitor industry leaders expect a Hawaii tourism slowdown to develop this summer.

Visitor arrival data for May has yet to be compiled and published, but in April there was only a 1.1% increase from the same month in 2022 and it included a 9.7% drop in the state’s core market for tourists from the U.S. West region.

The Hawaii Visitors &Convention Bureau also reported in May that fewer airline seats are being allocated to Hawaii’s top U.S. market than in 2022.

HVCB reported that total airline seats for this year are projected to drop 3.2% from 2022, while summer airline seats are forecast to fall 0.5% for June, 4.2% for July and 1.6% for August.

Such drops, if they happen, could weaken local hotel industry performance, which has been bolstered this year by higher rates but has yet to fully recover to pre-pandemic levels by some measures.

For the first five months of this year, the average daily rate is up 35.1% while occupancy is down 5.2 percentage points compared with the same period in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic began.

In May the average daily rate was 35.9% higher than in May 2019. Occupancy in May was down 6.2 percentage points from May 2019.

STR’s survey in May included 152 hotel properties with at least 20 rooms, representing 82% of the market not including vacation rental and timeshare properties.

The survey results show that performance in May varied a lot by county, with positive activity on Oahu, mixed results for Kauai and negative performance on Hawaii island and in Maui County.

On Oahu the average daily rate rose 7.5% in May to $264 from a year earlier, and occupancy rose 2.5 percentage points to 78.3%.

On Kauai the average daily rate rose 8.2% to $397, but occupancy declined 4.8 percentage points to 74.2% in May compared with the same month in 2022.

Hawaii island’s average daily rate fell 3.1% to $370 while occupancy dropped 7 percentage points to 66.9% in the same period.

For Maui County, which includes Maui, Lanai and Molokai, the average daily rate slipped 1.8% to $539, and occupancy fell 4.1 percentage points to 63.3%.