PO’IPU — On the heels of surprisingly strong October visitor arrival numbers came an equally robust November, said Henry Perez, president of the Hawai’i Hotel Association Kaua’i chapter. Though official figures for November won’t be out until near the end
PO’IPU — On the heels of surprisingly strong October visitor arrival numbers came an equally robust November, said Henry Perez, president of the Hawai’i Hotel Association Kaua’i chapter.
Though official figures for November won’t be out until near the end of this month, Perez, who is general manager of the Lawai Beach Resort, bases his assessment on talks with fellow hotel managers.
“November’s also going to be a phenomenal month,” he said.
“This year is one of the best years Kaua’i’s had in the hotel industry,” he added.
“We’ve had a phenomenal year this year,” with every hotel on the island showing greater numbers of guests each month compared to the same month last year, he said.
The island greeted 104,110 visitors in October, an increase of 11.7 percent over the same month last year and the biggest October since 1991.
For the first 10 months of this year, the island hosted 926,180 visitors, up 6 percent from the same period last year.
The October visitor count, reported by the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism, was the second-largest, single-month total of the year, behind July’s nearly 106,000 figure.
If November and December arrivals continue to soar, the isle’s 1999 visitor count could easily exceed the 1 million mark and may top 1991 figures when 1,267,620 people came to visit.
December’s traditional slow start appears likely again, though, with things picking up on the island around Dec.
22, the Wednesday before Christmas, Perez said.
If December gets off to a slow start, he said, hotel occupancy could take a dive.
“Slow meaning 50 percent, we’re going to have problems,” Perez said.
“Slow meaning 60 percent or 65, well, then it might not be that bad after it’s all said and done.” The island’s hotels are booked 90 percent or greater for the New Year’s weekend, he said.
“It’s good, but it’s not what people were expecting.
It’s a little bit (of a let down), but, again, yeah, it’s still going to be very strong,” Perez said.
The prognosis for the first part of next year is encouraging as well, Perez said.
A representative of Pleasant Hawaiian Holidays, owner of the Kaua’i Coconut Beach Resort, reported record first-quarter bookings for the new year at a recent Hawai’i Hotel Association general membership meeting that Perez attended in Kona on the Big Island.
“Definitely, Hawai’i is starting to recover very well economically,” said Perez.
The October American Dental Association convention brought thousands of dentists and their families to the state, and many of them stayed an extra week before or after the convention to take a Neighbor Island vacation.
“That just brought additional revenue to the Outer Islands.
That was amazing,” Perez said.
“Nobody ever imagined that it would generate that kind of business for the Neighbor Islands.” On the other hand, this is just the kind of impact people in the visitor industry were hoping for when the convention center was built in Waikiki, he commented.
“So those types of conventions that the convention center is starting to bring in are going to dramatically show us what the convention center was all about, and why we did it,” Perez said.
