Visitor arrivals up 7%

2004-08-18 - Pacific Business News:

Visitor arrivals up 7%
Howard Dicus

Hawaii visitor arrivals are 7 percent higher than this time last year, based on state airport arrival counts for seven days through Aug. 15.

Domestic arrivals for that period were up 6 percent and Japanese arrivals up 12 percent.

Since August began, international arrivals have fallen below 5,000 a day only twice, and have topped 6,000 nine times, including Tuesday, when the count was 6,240. Japanese arrivals alone topped 6,000 last Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Those visitors should mostly still be here, based on the usual average stay of Japanese visitors to the state.

Domestic visitor traffic has topped 20,000 on six days so far this month, most recently on Saturday when 21,166 people flew here from the mainland. Oahu, Maui, the Big Island and Kauai have all been getting a few hundred extra visitors most days, compared to last year.

These are the Monday arrivals from the mainland, with the nearest Monday last year in parenthesis for comparison:

Honolulu: 12,346 (11,671).
Maui: 5,321 (4,798).
Big Island: 1,122 (1,166).
Kauai: 1,194 (971).
While the Big Island was down from last year on Monday, it got hundreds of extra visitors the day before.

Reach Howard Dicus at hdicus@bizjournals.com.