LIHUE — Visitors to the Hawaiian Islands spent a total of $1.4 billion in February, a decrease of 2.7 percent compared to February 2018, according to preliminary statistics released Thursday by the Hawaii Tourism Authority.
A total of 782,584 visitors came to Hawaii in February, up slightly, 0.5 percent, from the same month last year. Total visitor days also declined, down 1.9 percent, versus February 2018, due to a shorter average length of stay by visitors from most markets.
It was a similar story on Kauai, which saw 104,167 visitors in February, down 0.2 percent from February 2018. For the first two months of the year, Kauai has had 210,231 visitors, according to HTA, a 1.4 percent decline from the same time period last year.
Visitor spending, however, rose 4.7 percent in February, to $153.5 million. But for the first two months of the year, visitor spending totaled $329.9 million on Kauai, down 1.4 percent, compared to the same time frame in 2018.
Visitors to Kauai are also not staying as long this year.
In February, Kauai visitors stayed on average 7.63 days, down from 7.77 days for February 2018. For the first two months of the year, visitors stayed, on average, 8.17 days on Kauai, down from 8.31 days for the first two months of last year.
Visitor spending on Oahu decreased (down 1.6 percent to $613 million) while visitor arrivals (456,820) were flat compared to last February.
Maui recorded increases in both visitor spending (up 1.2 percent to $413 million) and visitor arrivals (plus 1.5 percent to 220,801).
The island of Hawaii saw declines in visitor spending (down 17.5 percent to $192.3 million) and visitor arrivals (down 14.8 percent to 137,502).
In February, visitor spending increased from the U.S. West (plus 4.7 percent to $503.3 million) but declined from U.S. East (down 6.7 percent to $370.9 million), Japan (down 0.8 percent to $170.1 million), Canada (down 0.7 percent to $150.7 million) and all other international markets (plus 15.3 percent to $188.7 million) compared to a year ago.
Aloha Kakou,
Visitors count down…! Say that wouldn’t be a reflection on traffic, would it?
The Garden Island says that the older police get the overtime income but also the sort of fake salary boost that bloats their retire,ent income to burden the tax payers with for rest of the life of the retiring police officers and their spouses. That spells Police vs. Civilians. Besides many police retire early such as the upcoming case of the current but out going short term Chief. And why is it KAUAI Police Dept. cannot find a Chief from its own ranks? That’s odd isn’t it.
Further wouldn’t it serve the island’s needs better if the younger police with younger families and greater bills to pay got the overtime assignments and increases pay plus making those assignments directing traffic during bad traffic hours manning the blinking red stop lights so that you could travel non stop at speed limit from north Kapa’a to Lihue at 100 cars at a time with intervals of a few minutes to empty the intersections and shopping centers.
The former Mayor did not do one thing to improve traffic during his 10 year reign over Kauai. Though is was gratifying to see his picture in the paper every day attending community events.
Let’s hope our new leader is going to come up with an effective plan for the traffic. While the Highways are State operations, Tourism is an individual island’s livelihood, and a shame to see Tourism ill effected by traffic solution negligence.
It’s understandable that since Ron, Dee, Jimmie, and Nadine probably spend much of their time on Oahu, that they are not suffering the traffic here at home on Kauai. But it would be nice if they could collaborate with Derek and come up with some sort of solution.
Mahalo,
Charles
104,167 is a lot for Kaua’i. Visitors used the local businesses to vacation. February. A lot of activities to cover for the island. That means a lot of issues the island faced. Where should they start? Who will be paying for the fix ups or remedies the businesses want? The business. Does the county involve themselves with this? If so, how? That is a lot to do around the island. I doubt they have the manpower or authority to get anything done. Money from them?
With all of the garbage, litter, abandoned cars, and drunk locals who like to pick fights with visitors, you’re
going to start seeing a huge drop in tourism. Be careful how you treat visitors. Even if you don’t like them, their money puts food on your table, and gas in your idiotic lifted pick-up trucks.
Ahahahahahahaha! Idiotic lifted pick-up trucks! So hick. So unfortunatly true.
Good observations, Mina.
“their money puts food on your table…?”
Uh, no, MY money puts food on my table. The money I work hard every day to earn. I work in the ag industry, but even those who DO work in the tourist industry, work hard to earn THEIR money.
agreed LMat
Hum…..Kauai population somewhere around 70,000 people. Monthly visitors over 100,000. Guess that explains Kapaa traffic
Soon it will fall more when the tourists realize they have to spend most of their time in the terrible traffic!