HAWAII. June was a bad month for inbound tourism to Hawaii with total visitor arrivals by air down by -13.6% year-on-year to 580,862, according to the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism.
The key nationality from a travel retail perspective, the Japanese, were down by -10%. However Japanese per-person per-day spending increased by +8.4% to US$284.10, while their per-person per-trip expenditure rose by +5.4% to US$1,567.40.
Total air visitor expenditures decreased -13.5% or US$153.2 million from the same month last year to US$982.4 million.
The decline was driven by the drop in arrivals allied to lower daily spending (down -2.1% to US$177 per person).
Total visitor days for air and cruise visitors in June were off -12.2% year-on-year. Total arrivals by air and cruise visitors decreased -14.2%.
Among the top four visitor markets, air arrivals from Canada rose +18.6% but visitations from the US West (-16.5%), US East (-17%) and Japan (-10%) were down.
“June’s visitor statistics reflect the loss of two Norwegian Cruise Line ships, increased fuel costs and a continued soft travel market especially from the US Mainland,” said State Tourism Liaison Marsha Wienert.
“The Hawai”˜i Visitors and Convention Bureau launched a US$3 million campaign in June to help stimulate travel from the US West to the islands, which had some positive impact in July and August. Even with all of the challenges we face in the tourism, I believe there are many opportunities to stimulate our base market, the US, while continuing to grow the Asia, Canada and Australia markets.”
For the first half of 2008, total arrivals by air and cruise declined -5.2% year-on-year to 3,551,035 visitors.
Japanese arrivals were down by -5.7% in the same period to 562,720.
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