Visitor spending falls -14.9% in Hawaii as arrivals slump; Japanese market down further - 08/09/08
Published: 08/09/08
Source: ©The Moodie Report
By Martin Moodie
US (HAWAII). The troubled state of the US economy, problems in the cruise sector and a continued deterioration in the Japanese market hit Hawaii’s all-important tourism market hard in July.
The Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism announced that total air visitor expenditures were down -14.9%, or US$177.3 million, from the same month last year to US$1 billion.
The decline was caused by lower daily spending (-2.8% to US$175 per person) and a -13.7% year-on-year drop in visitor arrivals by air to 613,550 visitors.
Among the top four visitor markets, air arrivals from Canada increased by +15.6% compared to July 2007. But visitations from the US West (-19.3%), US East (-13.8%) and Japan (-11.7%) were down sharply from last year.
The Japanese market, so important to Hawaii's leading travel retailer DFS Group, has been very soft in Hawaii throughout the year, coming off a poor performance in 2007. While per person per trip spending rose +9.1%, that was not enough to offset the downturn in arrivals, with total expenditure by Japanese visitors in July falling by -3.7% to US$163.8 million.
"Prior to June and July Hawaii's visitor market had managed to weather the softness that was being felt by other travel destination as a result of the slowing national economy," said State Tourism Liaison Marsha Wienert.
"July was the second month we have seen a significant impact on the visitor industry due to a variety of factors, including the national economy, rising fuel prices, and the loss of the two Norwegian Cruise Line ships.
“As an example, 45% of O‘ahu's decline in arrivals can be attributed to decreased cruise visitors. The same holds true for the neighbour islands, where 83.7% of Kauai's, 46% of Maui's and 65% of the Big Island's decrease in arrivals are attributable to the decrease in cruise visitors.”
Putting an upbeat spin on a disappointing result, she noted: “Even with the current challenges, our visitor industry is resilient and there is great potential in developing visitor markets. As witnessed this year and as can be seen in the 2007 Annual Visitor Research Report also released today, in addition to our core US market in 2007, we saw exceptional double-digit increases in expenditures and visitors days by visitors from Canada, Oceania and ‘Other Asia’.
“With the easing of travel restrictions for Korean and Chinese visitors, there are tremendous possibilities from these countries and we anticipate a doubling of arrivals and spending from the ‘Other Asia’ market within the next few years.”
For the first seven months of 2008 total arrivals by air and cruise declined -6.6% from the same period last year to 4,165,242 visitors. For the year to date arrivals by air totalled 4,112,992 visitors, down -6.4%.
Japanese visitor numbers were off by -6.7% in the period to 665,401 while per person per trip spending rose +7.0% to US$1,610.30. Total Japanese expenditures for the year were off by -0.2% to US$1,071.5 million.
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