11:38 EDT Wednesday 9/25/2002August: Over 600,000 Visitors Served
Howard Dicus, Pacific Business News
The August tourism wrap-up from the state shows that visitors from the West are still coming to Hawaii in large numbers while traffic from the East is down slightly and volume is down much more from Japan and Canada. The state counts 425,741 visitors on domestic flights and 189,653 international arrivals in August, the domestic figure up 2.6 percent and the second number down 17.4 percent from August of last year.
Put the domestic and international arrival numbers together and you get a 4.5 percent decline from August of last year. The story is a little brighter than that, however, because both domestic and international vacationers tended to stay longer on average. Total visitor days were down only 1.2 percent. That actually makes it the second best August ever.
Readers with direct access to the original report Tuesday from the Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism should note that Hospitality Advisors LLC reported lower hotel occupancy, not higher, as the DBEDT report had stated. Hotel occupancy is above year-ago levels on Kauai, however.
DBEDT Director Seiji Naya said the influx of 8,000 visitors for the National Medical Association boosted the August numbers. NMA has already decided to come to Hawaii again in 2007.
Arrivals well-exceeded year-ago levels from the Pacific states, the Mountain states, the West South Central and East South Central regions. California sent 48.8 percent of all domestic visitors, and California arrivals ran 5.3 percent better than year 2001 levels.
There were no cruise ships from out-of-state during August 2002.
Pacific Business News
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