12:50 EDT Tuesday 8/13/2002Hawaii Domestic Visitor Arrivals Improve
Howard Dicus, Pacific Business News
To a greater extent this month than last, visitor arrivals from the mainland are running well above year-ago levels, the state’s official airport counts show.
The daily domestic arrival count has topped 20,000 twice so far this month, on Saturday, Aug. 3, and Saturday, Aug. 10, and has yet to fall below 17,000 a day.
Last year at this time there had been four days below 17,000 and only one above 20,000. Most days the count runs at least 5 percent above year-ago levels.
Though Oahu and Maui get the lion’s share of domestic visitors as always, the big beneficiaries of extra arrivals are the Big Island and Kauai.
Honolulu has been getting more than 11,000 domestic arrivals daily and Maui has been getting more than 4,000, perhaps slightly better than last summer.
But Kauai’s more modest domestic arrivals are up almost 50 percent most days as a result of extra airlift. In June, American Airlines joined United Airlines in providing daily direct flights to Lihue. Kauai is now getting more than 500 domestic visitors on most weekdays and nearly 1,000 most weekends.
The Big Island, aided by the convenient new location of the lava flow closer to the end of Chain of Craters Road, has welcomed about 1,000 domestic visitors a day since August began. On four days it has been below that number, but only a little below, and the rest of the time it has been higher. On Sunday, Aug. 4, domestic flights brought 1,467 people to the Big Island, which last year at this time had logged several days with fewer than 900 arrivals and one with fewer than 700 domestic visitors.
International arrivals remain roughly a fifth below last year’s levels, though the raw numbers have been better so far this month because it’s vacation season.
The passenger count on flights from other nations except Canada has fallen below 5,000 twice so far this August but has topped 6,000 six times. This past weekend there were 8,410 international arrivals Saturday and 7,093 Sunday.
It sounds very good until one compares last summer’s figures and finds that more than 9,000 international arrivals were logged on Aug. 10 and 11, 2001.
Pacific Business News
Go to business listings