Weekend visitor arrivals: 50,000, but fewer from Japan

Weekend visitor arrivals: 50,000, but fewer from Japan
- 2004-07-20 - Pacific Business News (Honolulu)
Howard Dicus

More than 50,000 people flew to Hawaii over the weekend, about 2,000 more than the same Saturday and Sunday last year, but it wasn't because of resurgent international visitor traffic. The Japanese arrivals actually went down.

After weeks of getting 4,000 to 5,000 Japanese visitors daily, well above year-ago levels, the count fell to 2,927 Sunday and, though it isn't counted in this weekend's roundup, 2,637 on Monday. Last year the daily count from Japan never fell below 3,000 during the first 19 days of July.

Overall arrivals improved in spite of this because all four major counties got more mainland visitors than they did last year. Maui and Kauai were up by a few hundred visitors but the Big Island almost doubled its visitor traffic and Oahu by itself got 2,000 more visitors.

Mainland arrivals (last year's numbers in parentheses):

To Honolulu: 25,662 (23,642).
To Maui: 9,837 (9,484).
To Big Island: 2,976 (1,506).
To Kauai: 2,581 (2,169).
Total: 41,056 (37,801).
International arrivals:

From Japan: 7,670 (8,845).
From other nations: 1,688 (1,677).
Total: 9,358 (10,522).
For the seven days through Sunday, Hawaii welcomed 175,849 visitors by air, compared to 163,392 on the commensurate days last year, based on airport arrival figures posted by the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism, which in turn bases the numbers on data supplied by the state airports division.

A separate seven-day measurement reported Tuesday morning by the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau, and covering the week through July 18, concluded that domestic arrivals were at 107 percent of year-ago levels and Japanese arrivals at 104 percent.

Reach Howard Dicus at hdicus@bizjournals.com.