US (HAWAII). Visitor arrivals to Hawaii declined by -1.7% year on year to 505,676, according to preliminary statistics released by the Hawaii Tourism Authority.
Air arrivals were flat compared to last year, down by only -0.3%, but total ship arrivals declined by -39.7%. For the first ten months of 2009 total visitor arrivals were down by -5.5%.
“The visitor arrival data released today showed that some key positive trends continued through October 2009,” said Hawaii Tourism Authority President and CEO Mike McCartney. “Growth in arrivals from the US West continued to increase for the sixth consecutive month”.
Japanese visitor arrivals increased, by +2.6% to 99,243 during October.
McCartney said that the Hawaii Tourism Authority was pleased with these results, as the US West and Japan are the two key markets it has recently been focusing on. For the first ten months of 2009 Japanese visitor numbers fell by -6.5% to 924,176.
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Total visitor expenditure by air visitors declined during the month of October due to lower average daily spending by these visitors (which fell to US$179 per person from US$185 per person in October 2008).
Although the market is down overall, McCartney says “In comparison to competitive destinations, Hawaii is achieving strong results.
“Some of the hotel data recently released showed that Hawaii (66.9%), has one of the highest hotel occupancy rates in the US, only trailing New York (76.1%), San Francisco (72.1%) and Washington D.C. (67.1%) which are business destinations.
“This is an indicator that Hawaii continues to be a desirable destination and puts Hawaii in a favourable position for when the economy recovers”.
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