After years of COVID-induced stagnation, Hawaii visitor rates have all but recovered, with June arrivals nearly matching prepandemic numbers.
According to the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism, 842,927 people visited the state in June, an 89% recovery from visitation rates in June 2019.
To date, 4.4 million visitors have arrived in the state, 14% fewer than in 2019.
On the Big Island, however, the difference was less pronounced. Visitor arrivals on the island totaled 157,443 in June, only 3.7% fewer than in 2019, while 812,729 have visited this year so far, a drop of only 7.7% from 2019.
Despite the smaller visitation numbers, total visitor expenditures were almost universally higher. Statewide, visitors spent $200 million more in June than they did in June 2019, and $40 million more on the Big Island, an increase of 20%.
“This significant shift indicates our current visitors are spending substantially more on their Hawaii trip, counter to the misperception that we are seeing a lower-spending, budget traveler,” Hawaii Tourism Authority President John De Fries said Thursday in a statement.
Those higher prices don’t seem to be deterring visitors.
“We raised all our prices by like 15, 20%,” said Robert Sullivan, owner of Kama‘aina Custom Tours. “But the price doesn’t seem to bother anyone. I think everyone’s just accepted that everything costs more right now.”
Oleathia Buntin, owner of tour company C Big Island, agreed.
“Insurance costs are higher, gas prices are higher, park entrance fees are higher,” Buntin said, but she added that she is “for sure” getting comparable numbers of customers as she was prepandemic.
“We barely started coming back alive in March,” Buntin said. “But now it’s very busy — we’re very much surviving.”
Sullivan said July is typically his business’ slowest month, but based on current bookings for September, he estimated that there should be at least as many, if not more, customers in the fall as there were before the pandemic.
Both Sullivan and Buntin said cruise ship passengers make up the bulk of their customer base. But Lance Duyao, director of retail operations for Big Island Candies, said that, outside of cruise ship days, there are far fewer large tour groups coming in the store.
“There’s more independent travelers coming in on their own,” Duyao said, adding that Big Island Candies’ business is still not quite back to prepandemic levels.
Duyao, like Sullivan and Buntin, noted that the cost of doing business has gone up.
“I’m putting together a catalogue. And for catalogues, it used to be we just lay it out and send it to the printers,” Duyao said. “But now we have to order paper six months in advance … and we don’t know how much the paper will cost until it prints six months from now. It makes it very hard to plan.”
All three businesses also noted that regardless of the number of customers, the number of employees is lower than normal.
“We have like five more positions we could fill right now,” Buntin said, adding that workers’ wages also have increased since before the pandemic.
DBEDT Director Mike McCartney said in a statement Thursday that the department is optimistic about the second half of 2022, especially as Japanese visitors are beginning to return — 11,490 visitors from Japan arrived in the state in June, about a third of total Japanese arrivals this year.
But, he added, with yet another variant of omicron gaining dominance, and COVID case numbers on the rise nationwide, the visitor industry’s recovery isn’t set in stone.
Email Michael Brestovansky at mbrestovansky@hawaiitribune-herald.com.