Transportation Security Administration checkpoints at peak times looked like a Disneyland-like labyrinth of lines earlier this week at Daniel K. Inouye International Airport.

However, Hawaii’s visitor industry and tourism researchers say the forecast as Hawaii heads into the popular spring break travel period and the lead-up to summer is soft to middling.

It’s the same trend that Hawaii has been seeing since the start of the year. January visitor arrivals and spending numbers released Thursday by the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism showed continued weakness since the August Maui wildfires, which contributed to a dampening of visitor arrivals in five of the past six months and caused visitor spending to decline in all six months.

In January some 763,480 visitors came to the Hawaiian Islands, down 3.6% from January 2023, according to DBEDT. Likewise, total visitor spending, without taking inflation into account, declined to $1.81 billion, a drop of 4.5% from January 2023.

Keith Vieira, principal of KV &Associates, Hospitality Consulting, said first-quarter tourism to Hawaii is soft, and while “we are seeing a slight uptick for spring break, it’s not significant yet. It’s really the second half that will determine if we can get back to some of the numbers that we need to be at by 2025, and some of that is counting on the Japanese market coming back, which is I think questionable.”

Vieira opined that a reason for the softness is the “halo effect” from earlier mixed messages that government officials, celebrities and even some members of Hawaii’s visitor industry put out about Maui, which historically has been the Hawaiian island most dependent on U.S. tourists.

DBEDT Director James Kunane Tokioka said in a statement, “Locally, the Maui wildfires continued to impact visitors to Maui six months after the tragedy. Maui’s visitor counts decreased by 23.5% compared to January 2023, although there has been progress from August 2023 when visitor arrivals were down by 57.8%. With the active recovery efforts and campaigns, we hope to see continuous improvements over the upcoming months.”

But data shows that Hawaii’s tourism decline isn’t entirely dependent on Maui. Demand for Hawaii in general is slipping among travelers from Hawaii’s core U.S. market at a time when tourism from Japan, which is historically Hawaii’s top international visitor source market, still lags.

Tokioka said, “There were incidents in January 2024 which affected our tourism recovery. The tragic accident at Haneda Airport in Japan and the grounding of Boeing 737-9 Max airplanes resulted in flight cancellations and reduced visitor arrivals.”

To be sure, in January, 356,174 visitors arrived from Hawaii’s top U.S. West source market, which was down 7.1% from January 2023 but a 12.1% increase compared with January 2019. U.S. West visitor spending fell to $768.2 million, a 4.5% drop from January 2023 but a 38% increase from January 2019.

Arrivals from the U.S. East in January fell 9.8% to 192,490 visitors compared with January 2023. However, U.S. East arrivals in January were 3.9% higher than they were in January 2019. Spending by visitors from the U.S. East fell 6.4% year over year to $579 million. But it was 25% higher than in January 2019.

Meanwhile, January arrivals from Japan were still 56.1% lower than in January 2019, and spending was down 54.5%.

Jack Richards, president and CEO of California- headquartered Pleasant Holidays, said, “We’re down double digits for passengers to Hawaii year-over-year, compared to the same time in 2023. With the entire world open for travel, Americans have alternatives and they are exercising them. Japan and Asia are in triple digits. Australia, New Zealand, the Caribbean and Europe are up double digits to high double digits. Normally, nobody goes to Europe in the first quarter, but they are going this year.”

Chris Kam, Omnitrak president and chief operating officer, said January data from the company’s syndicated survey TravelTrak shows that travel demand among U.S. travelers is pretty identical to what it was as it came out of 2023. However, Kam said a major difference is that more people said they were looking to travel overseas than they were at the same time in 2023.

“So when it comes to Hawaii, we would be facing increased competition from the Caribbean, Mexico, Europe and even Asia,” he said. “A lot of (U.S. travelers) came to Hawaii during the pandemic, so we saw that bump; now they want to move to some places that they haven’t been able to visit in the last few years.”

The U.S. issued a travel warning Thursday ahead of the spring-break period regarding safety conditions in Mexico in which it urged travelers to exercise “increased caution.” Kam said the warning “doesn’t hurt Hawaii,” but it’s not likely to bring a significant boost, either, as “all those other places like the Caribbean and Western Europe are out there, too.”

Richards said Pleasant Holidays was concerned enough about the drop in U.S. travelers to Hawaii that it asked travel advisers why Hawaii trips were not selling like before.

“They are telling us that their clients don’t feel welcome in Hawaii right now,” he said. “It stems from the messaging that came out right after the Maui wildfires and from the ‘Malama’ (take care of) campaign that urged visitors to travel respectfully — that is a very difficult message to transmit to somebody getting ready to come on a honeymoon.”

Vieira concurred that the “Malama” campaign was “too long and came at the wrong time.”

However, he said that he is optimistic about the “Makaukau Maui” campaign, which HTA recently launched. That campaign, which is part of a broader stewardship effort by HTA, relies on locals to share that they are ready to get back to work.

Tyler Gomes, chief administrator of Kilohana, HTA’s stewardship contractor, also presented to the HTA board Thursday a glimpse of some of the Maui Recovery Plan, which will include more “Malama Maui” as well as a new plan to launch curated itineraries on the HTA’s GoHawai‘i landing page specific to destinations outside of West Maui that promote shopping, dinning and activities.

Richards said “Makaukau Maui” sounds promising but that “we haven’t seen a lot of it.”

“They need to launch a fairly significant marketing program that comes out and says, ‘The aloha spirit is alive and well. Let us welcome you to the Aloha State. Come experience the aloha of Hawaii,’” he said. “We are planning to launch a significant campaign for Hawaii in March or April as part of a big push for summer.”

Richards said such efforts are needed as U.S. travelers are seeing media images about everything from Lahaina Strong camped out on Kaanapali Beach to protest a shortage of housing for fire survivors to articles about the state Legislature considering raising Hawaii’s transient accommodations taxes and adding a $25 environmental impact fee.

“That’s the kind of messaging that’s coming out. If the intent is to limit visitors to Hawaii, it’s working,” he said.

HTA board Chair Mufi Hannemann and Daniel Naho‘opi‘i, HTA chief administrative officer and interim president and CEO, told the HTA board meeting Thursday that HTA has identified a downward trend and is communicating to the Legislature the importance of continued marketing and management to stabilize the market.

Hannemann said, “There’s major competition out there, and we can’t let what has happened on Maui and the financial crisis that the state’s facing and some of the obligations that we have … stop us. This is the economic revenue generator for the state, this industry. You can see it right now; the trend is going to continue, and spring looks pretty soft as well. It’s not good news but we have a plan.”