Hawaii visitor arrivals up 5% last week

Hawaii visitor arrivals up 5% last week
- 2004-06-29 - Pacific Business News (Honolulu)
Howard Dicus

Hawaii welcomed 182,263 visitors by air in the seven-day period through Sunday, or 20,347 more than in the same period last year, according to arrival counts taken by the state. That's a 5 percent improvement.

Domestic arrivals were 3 percent below year-before levels for the days June 21-27, something not expected at this normally busy time of year. But a closer examination of the numbers finds that the downtrend was confined to one island.

The Big Island got more than 1,000 extra visitors and Maui got almost 3,000 more. Kauai was up slightly. In brief, the neighbor islands got the usual healthy increase in mainland visitor traffic. The decline came on Oahu, where domestic arrivals slipped below the 85,000 mark.

International arrivals were much improved, with more than 34,000 Japanese visitors, a 40 percent year-to-year improvement, and more than 4,000 visitors from other foreign countries, which may not sound like many but is far above the 2,400 who came last year.

Domestic arrivals in the period (last year in parenthesis):

Oahu: 84,706 (85,441).
Maui: 33,984 (31,089).
Big Island: 9,328 (8,280).
Kauai: 7,207 (7,095).
International arrivals in the period (last year in parenthesis):

From Japan: 34,218 (28,608).
From other countries: 4,027 (2,401).
Reach Howard Dicus at hdicus@bizjournals.com.