April visitor arrivals plunge 7.6%

Visitor arrivals to Hawaii dropped 7.6 percent in April while visitor expenditures were virtually flat.

The figures, released Tuesday by the Hawaii Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism, reflect the drop in airline seats that followed the shutdowns of Aloha Airlines and ATA Airlines in late March and early April.

A total of 538,428 visitors arrived by air in Hawaii, a decline of about 44,000 from April 2007.

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Those visitors spent $881.5 million in April, an increase of $3.2 million or 0.4 percent from the same month last year.

The average amount each visitor spent increased 5.9 percent to $185 per day and 8.6 percent to $1,637 per trip.

But visitors from the U.S. West spent 11.2 percent less in April they did the year before, a decline of $42 million.

The drop in visitor arrivals was led by a 15.2 percent falloff in travel from the West Coast, Hawaii's largest market for tourism.

California alone posted a 24.8 percent decline in tourists flying domestically to Hawaii, translating into 38,000 less arrivals.

The total decline in visitor arrivals in April was also fueled by a 15.3 percent decline in Japanese visitors, a year-over-year drop from 91,546 to 77,548.

There was at least one bright spot in the April numbers: The total number of visitors from Canada jumped 48.2 percent, from about 20,000 in April 2007 to about 30,000 in April 2008.

But the number of Canadians visitors who planned to stay on a cruise ship in Hawaii fell 46.5 percent.

That decline -- as well as the drop of 72.5 percent of U.S. West visitors who said they would also stay on a cruise ship -- reflected the decision by Miami-based NCL Corp. to pull two of its three vessels out of the Hawaii market this year.