Hawaii visitor spending up as tourism continues to recover from the pandemic

by Merrilee Gasser, The Center Square, May 31, 2023

Visitors spent $1.72 billion in Hawaii during April as the islands saw the highest recovery rate since COVID-19, according to new tourism data.

The data shows 806,209 people visited Hawaii in April 2023, representing a 97.4% recovery since April 2019. Though fewer visitors arrived than pre-pandemic rates, visitor spending was up by more than 30%, the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism reported.

Visitors spent $1.32 billion in April 2019 compared to the $1.72 billion in April this year. The numbers are adjusted for inflation.

Most April visitors came from the U.S. mainland, with 465,116 traveling from the U.S. West and 186,695 from the U.S. East.

Visitors from Japan jumped by over 400% in a massive increase since last year. DBEDT said 34,358 people visited from Japan in April compared to only 6,749 in April 2022.

Visits from Canadians went down by nearly 9%. There were 39,333 visitors from Canada in April, down from 43,107 in April 2022.

An additional 80,708 visitors came from other areas, including Europe, Latin America and the Philippines, DBEDT said.

“April marked the 24th consecutive month where visitor arrivals from the U.S. mainland exceeded 2019 monthly levels for those respective months,” said DBEDT Director James Kunane Tokioka. “April U.S. visitor arrivals were 19% higher than the same month in 2019.”

Tokioka said the cruise ship market has also contributed to visitor recovery, with cruise ship visitors reaching the second-highest count since 2019.

“It will take a while for the international visitor arrivals to recover to pre-pandemic levels," Tokioka said. "The recovery of international markets this April was at 55.8% and Japanese arrivals were at 28.8% of the April 2019 levels. Visitor expenditures, as measured by nominal dollars, were 21.7% higher compared with the same period in 2019. After adjusting for inflation, real visitor spending was higher than the pre-pandemic level.” 

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