Tourism down

Visits to Maui County were down 2.8 percent in August, according to figures released by the Hawaii Tourism Authority on Thursday.

Every other county was down in August, too, although Kauai did best at minus 1.2 percent.

For the first eight months, however, Maui's head count is up 4.5 percent, the best in the state. That reflects a rapid expansion early in the year.

That growth slowed in April and his since turned into a steady decline.

Terryl Vencl, executive director of the Maui Visitors and Convention Bureau, said she thinks two factors have teamed up to disrupt the recovery that was steady all last year - nervousness about the world economy and higher airline prices.

"It does seem that consumer confidence is eating into people's willingness to travel," she said.

Their desires are still there. "We're on the road, we're still pulling," Vencl said, but holidaymakers are holding back.

She noted that Hawaii Pacific University economist Leroy Laney visited Maui last week and cited tourism as the one bright spot in the overall economy.

Vencl agreed that it is, but added, "one bright spot" cannot support the entire local economy. She said the visitors bureau could only continue to "pound the pavement and beat the bushes" to keep the visitor industry moving.

Maui County's August head count totaled 191,951, with Maui island down 2.4 percent to 188,982.

Molokai and Lanai both were up, the only places in the state that were. Molokai had 4,427 visitors, up 8 percent; and Lanai had 6,546, up 5 percent. The state tourism authority cautioned that the numbers were in part estimates and that the smaller islands may have a larger percentage of uncertainty. Totals for the three islands exceeded the county total because of multi-island travel.

Statewide, August saw 650,120 visits, a drop of 4.1 percent. Oahu was down 5.3 percent to 409,222. Hawaii County was down 6.1 percent to 113,619. Kauai was down to 89,698.

Although the four counties vary a bit according to external events - Oahu was hurt more by the effects of the Japanese earthquake than the other islands - over time the relative positions of the counties seldom depart much from a basic ratio: Oahu has twice as many visitors as Maui County, and Maui County has as many as Kauai and Hawaii combined.

Despite its problems in the Japan market, Oahu is still slightly stronger this year, probably largely due to burgeoning air connections with other parts of east Asia.

The tourism authority emphasizes revenue, which is up even if head counts and visitor-days are down.

In August, total visitor expenditures were up 2.3 percent to $1.08 billion. For the first eight months, they are up 14.1 percent to $8.25 billion.

While Oahu and Kauai saw increases in spending, Maui saw a decline of 4.8 percent to $248.1 million, and the Big Island saw a 19.4 percent decline to $105.8 million from a year ago.

For the first eight months of the year, total spending rose 14.1 percent to $8.25 billion, compared to the same period last year. There also were 2.5 percent more arrivals, and visitors stayed for more days than last year.

Despite the summer slump, tourism authority President Mike McCartney said officials remain confident that projected increases for visitors for the remainder of the year will help Hawaii achieve its goals for this year.

"Most of this optimism is due to the anticipated increases in airlift from key markets such as Korea, Japan, China and Australia. And we fully expect this growth in airlift to continue well into 2012," he said.

"We also expect continued growth in visitor spending, in part due to the advantageous monetary exchange rate for markets such as Japan and Canada," he said. "This has played a major role in the increase in daily and overall spending, resulting in $1 billion more to our state's economy compared to the same time last year."

Vencl said, though, that the weakness suggests that visitor industry operators will have to continue discounting, or as she prefers to call it, "value adds."

Source - mauinews