Nearly 700,000 total visitors have arrived on Kaua‘i so far this year, with 94,915 coming in the month of August alone. While slightly lower than last August, the total visitor count so far this year is still 3.2 percent greater
Nearly 700,000 total visitors have arrived on Kaua‘i so far this year, with 94,915 coming in the month of August alone. While slightly lower than last August, the total visitor count so far this year is still 3.2 percent greater than last year-to-date, putting Kaua‘i’s tourism industry strongly in the positive column.
Perhaps the best news this month is that visitors to Kaua‘i have spent $759 million so far this year, an increase of 13.2 percent. In August alone, visitors spent to Kaua‘i spent $100.7 million, a decrease of 9.8 percent.
“We are pleased to see that Hawaii’s top two markets, the U.S. West and U.S. East, continue to report strong arrival growth. Domestic arrivals have reached record levels every month since February this year,” said State Tourism Liaison Marsha Wienert.
The good news held true for the rest of the state, who boasted a 2.9 percent increase in total visitor arrivals in August 2004, to 4.68 million. A total of 42.9 million have visited the islands so far this year, and increase of 4.3 percent.
Domestic visitors arriving by air reached a new record for August, rising 2 percent to 645,543 visitors. International visitor arrivals continued to increase for the sixth consecutive month, up 5.4 percent with growth from both the Japanese and Canadian markets.
On Kaua‘i, people spent an average of $159.1 per person per day in August, and have spent about the same so far this year, which is 6.7 percent better than last year. The average length of stay on Kaua‘i was 6.67 days in August, just 2.3 percent lower than last August. But so far this year, visitors have spent an average of 6.95 days on Kaua‘i, up 2.8 percent so far from last year. Statewide, visitors spent $919.8 million in August 2004.
“The state’s strong honeymoon and destination weddings market segment continued to out perform last year,” said Wienert. “Total visitors whose purpose was to honeymoon or get married increased 11.6 percent and 14.3 percent, respectively.” Repeat visitors comprised 62.1 percent of the total visitors to Hawaii compared to 63.2 percent for year-to-date 2003.
Cruise numbers are up
A total 129,679 out-of-state visitors boarded some 43 cruise ships so far this year, with 17,390 out-of-state visitors cruising in August 2004. Unfortunately, that was 15 percent less than the same time last year. August’s visitors were passengers of two Hawaiihome ported ships, the Norwegian Wind and the Pride of Aloha, and one out-of-state cruise ship. But August was a good month for cruising – 78 percent greater compared to the same month last year when there was only one Hawaii homeported ship, the Norwegian Star, that carried 9,792 out-ofstate visitors.
The decrease in cruise visitors was mainly due to a shift in scheduling, which brought fewer out-of-state cruise ships with less passenger capacity to the islands in the first eight months of 2004. Additionally, the Norwegian Star was the only Hawaii-home ported ship in the first four months of 2004, compared to the same period last year when both the Norwegian Star and the Norwegian Wind were based in Hawaii. In May 2004, the Norwegian Wind returned to Hawaii but the Norwegian Star departed.
Included in the August statistics is passenger count from the new Hawaii home based cruise ship the Pride of Aloha which began offering inter-island cruises in late June.
Repeat visitors to the islands comprised 56.8 percent of the out-of-state cruise visitors during year-to-date 2004, compared to 58 percent in the same period last year. These cruise visitors stayed an average of 7.9 days in Hawaii, of which 5.2 days were spent on their cruise and another 2.80 days were spent before and after their cruise.
