Fasten your seat belt.
The number of tourists to Hawaii and their daily spending fell sharply in April, the most since the Aug. 8 Maui wildfire, a sign that even the peak summer season could be sluggish.
Overall, “it’s been a milder-than-normal summer,” said Jeffrey Eslinger, senior director of market research for the Hawaii Tourism and Convention Authority.
Eslinger said Oahu and Kauai, which saw the biggest declines in TravelClick’s report for the week ending May 19, will fare better than other states this summer. The report compares the total number of hotel room nights sold over the next 12 months with bookings for the same period in 2023.
Eslinger said the 13th annual Pacific Arts and Culture Festival, which begins Thursday and runs through June 16, and the 29th Rim of the Pacific Exercise, which runs from June 26 to Aug. 2, will boost summer tourism to Oahu.
He said Oahu will also see some benefits from the Hawaii Convention Center’s summer business, including the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education, which brought roughly 5,000 delegates to Hawaii from Tuesday through Saturday, and several citywide conferences that will bring another 5,000 delegates later in the summer.
But Esslinger said West Maui is leading the summer slump, with bookings down 23.3% in June, 21.3% in July and 26.9% in August, with losses extending into January. Statewide data from TravelClick shows bookings down 1.8% in June, 0.4% in July and 1.5% in August.
Keith Vieira, president of hospitality consulting firm KV & Associates, said the summer slump will carry over into the fall, which will see an even steeper decline.
According to TravelClick data, hotel bookings statewide were down 12.2% in September, 9.7% in October, 8.7% in November and 1.5% in December, despite typically seeing increases during the festive season.
Hawaii’s tourism industry has been in a slump since the Maui wildfires, but the downturn got even worse in the spring: The state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism reported that 207,827 tourists visited the Hawaiian Islands on any given day in April, down 12.2% from April 2023.
DBEDT reported that 753,551 visitors came to the state in April, down 8.9% from a year ago. April visitation was 88.7% of April 2019’s levels, before the pandemic.
April visitation was down in the “all others” category, which includes Hawaii’s core western and eastern U.S. markets, Canada, and international markets other than Japan and Canada. Visitor numbers increased from cruise ships and from Japan, Hawaii’s largest international market before the pandemic.
Total visitor spending in nominal dollars for April was $1.5 billion, down 12.6% compared to April 2023. However, compared to April 2019, when nominal spending was approximately $1.3 billion, total visitor spending increased 14.3%.
Spending declined in the Western U.S., Eastern U.S., Canada and the “all other” category.
Results varied across islands and markets.
“This is the first time we’ve seen a decline in arrivals to Oahu since March 2021,” DBEDT Director James Kunane Tokioka said in a statement.
“The decrease was due to Easter being March 31, which caused spring break travel to move to March instead of April,” Tokioka said. “Easter in 2023 was April 9, which impacted our year-over-year performance.”
He added that the cruise market was strong in April, with tourists arriving on interstate cruise ships recording the second-highest monthly visitor numbers on record, but that this market typically has a smaller impact on a destination than air travelers, because “cruise travelers are more likely to join tour groups rather than explore islands independently or rent a car.”
Vieira said the delayed Easter contributed to tourism’s slowdown in April, but other factors also contributed to the lack of bookings for summer and fall. He said the strong U.S. dollar made international travelers find Hawaii too expensive, leading Americans to look to overseas destinations where they have more purchasing power. Vieira said some travelers continue to feel unwelcome because the Maui wildfires put additional strain on local communities and fueled a backlash against tourism.
“There’s been a whole lot of negative stories about Hawaii not wanting more tourists. Obviously not a majority, but a vocal minority,” he said. “The only way you can counter that is to counter it with a positive story.”
HVCB interim president and CEO Tom Mullen told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that its latest campaign, “People, Places and the Hawaiian Islands,” aimed at American travelers, launched four weeks ago and will run through June.
“We target discerning travelers through national banner ads, emails, social media and digital media,” he said. “Response rates to our advertising exceed industry standards, so we know we’re targeting and responding to the right customers.”
Mullen believes Hawaii’s rising hotel rates, combined with other fees and taxes, are deterring some customers from making purchases. For example, Pleasant Holidays’ wholesale package price for the Hilton Hawaiian Village Waikiki Beach Resort is $495 a night, but when resort fees, parking fees and taxes are added, the price jumps to $715 a night.
“That’s about a 40 percent increase,” Mullen said, adding that hotel rates in Jamaica are $436 a night and in Mexico they are $411.
The HVCB, responsible for branding Hawaii, the state’s largest U.S. tourist supply market, had planned to present an update on the campaign and other efforts at the HTA board’s monthly meeting on Thursday. But the HTA board postponed the presentation, along with three other items on its public agenda, after spending about four hours in executive session with state Attorney General Anne Lopez and Deputy Attorney General John Cole.
After the HTA Board left the closed session, Mr Cole stated that a full discussion had taken place regarding questions and issues relating to the Board’s powers and duties, and that the Board had consulted with legal counsel on item 8 on the agenda.
“No action was taken and nothing needed to be taken,” Cole said, “but perhaps something will happen in the future.”
He said the HTA board had discussed the personnel matters on Agenda 9 at length, but “no action was taken, including the board’s vote to take no action on the personnel matters discussed.”
On agenda item 10(b), Cole said the HTA board discussed the status of several pending issues with the state auditor regarding the HTA audit.
“Some action will be taken under the (Standing Committee on Administrative Audit) at a later date. No action was required by the board,” he said.
The board approved a request from HTA Trustee Mike White, chair of the Standing Committee on Management and Audit, to have HTA staff draft a request for proposals to solicit search firms to assist with the search effort for a new president and CEO.
HTA’s former president and CEO, John de Vries, stepped down in September. HTA’s chief administrative officer, Daniel Naho’opii, is serving as HTA’s interim president and CEO.
