April visitor spending up 14.9%

Visitor spending in April increased 14.9 percent from last year to $895.2 million.
Tourism officials see three reasons for the increase -- inflation, more Mainland visitor arrivals for the Easter holiday and a large convention.
Otherwise, the month followed the usual trend of increased arrivals from the Mainland and fewer from Japan. Japanese visitors outspent Mainland visitors on a daily basis.
Total year-over-year visitor count was up 10.7 percent to 588,215 in April. Tourists stayed an average of 8.67 days and spent $175.50 per person per day, up 2.6 percent from last year.
Visitors from the U.S. West were up 18.1 percent to 266,998. U.S. East and Canadian visitor arrivals increased 10 percent and 20 percent, respectively.
The Japanese visitor count dropped 5.2 percent to 100,483 arrivals.
For the first four months of 2006, the number of domestic arrivals hit a new high of 1.7 million.
Oahu was the only island to see a drop in visitor spending during the first four months -- down 1.8 percent to $1.7 billion. Maui saw an 24.6 percent increase to $1.2 billion, the Big Island 4.1 percent to $513.2 million, Kauai 9.4 percent to $391.3 million, Molokai 1.3 percent to $10.5 million, and Lanai 38.5 percent to $24.4 million.
The number of cruise visitors increased to 138,219 passengers in the first four months.