THE Hawaii Tourism Authority released its visitor statistics for both the month of November 2018 plus the year-to-date, confirming that the number of holiday-makers travelling to the US state in November had increased by 4.3% to 781,990 compared to the same period in 2017. The growth came in the form of both air travel and cruise ships, with air passengers increasing by 4.1% to 770,126 and cruise arrivals enjoying a 21.1% spike to 11,864 passengers.
The total number of days visitors spent in Hawaii for the month increased by 3%, with the average number of visitors on land on any given day also increasing by 3% to 221,935.
Both visitor spend and visitor arrivals in Oahu, Maui and Kauai all recorded increases in November when compared with the previous year.
Total visitor arrivals between January and November increased by 6.1% to 9,044,488, with growth from US West (9.7%), US East (8.3%), Canada (3.4%) and other international markets (3.5%) offsetting a 1.5% decline from Japanese visitors.
In terms of visitor spend, Hawaii’s four largest visitor markets all reported growth between January and November 2018, with US West reporting a 9.9% increase to US$6.01b, US East increasing by 9% to US$4.13b, Japan climbing by 1.9% to US$2.2b and Canada injecting a further 6.6% and US$960.7m to the local economy. Combined visitor spending from all other international markets also increased during the period by 8% to US$2.95b.
A total of 12,066,873 trans-Pacific air seats served the Hawaiian Islands year-to-date through November, up 8.8% from the same period in 2017.
