Maui County saw just a smidgen fewer than 1 million visitors in the first half of 2009, according to figures released Tuesday by the Hawaii Tourism Authority. If things stay the same, the county would finish the year short by 300,000 to 400,000 tourists compared with recent years.
Even if the numbers pick up, the amount being spent per person is low compared with previous years, thanks to aggressive discounting and savvy bargain hunting by travelers.
Maui island welcomed 176,455 visitors in June, which was 8,000 fewer, or 4.3 percent less, than the year before, which in turn was 48,000 fewer than the year before that. June 2008 was when the impact of the withdrawal of cruise ships and the failure of Aloha and ATA airlines really began to take hold of Maui's visitor industry. And, 2007 was a record year.
Overall, the state welcomed 5.2 percent fewer tourists in June than it did in the same month last year.
The tourism authority said Tuesday that travelers from Japan plunged 32.8 percent in June, the biggest drop for that market since May 2003. Arrivals from Canada were off 10.5 percent.
For year-to-date numbers, the state saw 9.8 percent fewer visitors compared with the same period last year. Visitors from Japan were off by 11 percent, and those from Canada were down 9 percent.
The absence of tourists on Maui was obvious anywhere you turned on the island in June, and still is.
At last week's annual marketing meeting of the Maui Visitors Bureau, predictions were that the slump will continue.
When the Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism, which compiles the statistics, breaks down the numbers into parts, it becomes obvious where the problem lies: right where Maui's prosperity lies in good times, the western states.
Visits from the Pacific coast to Maui County are down by about 73,000 this year, or 13.8 percent. That is more than 6 percentage points higher than the overall drop of West Coast visitors to the state, which was down 7.8 percent. The other Neighbor Islands are in the same double-digit league as Maui, while Oahu, less dependent on western states, is down 9.9 percent this year over last year.
These numbers include visitors by air. Cruise visitors add another 100,000 to the total but nothing to occupancy rates. Cruise business is down much more than tourism travel in general as well.
However, statewide air visits from western states increased for the second straight month, by 4.9 percent in June from the low levels of June 2008.
State Tourism Liaison Marsha Wienert said: "June's results were not unexpected, as global economic conditions are continuing to affect Hawaii's visitor industry and our economy."
June numbers were also affected by swine flu jitters in Japan, which are expected to abate, at least for a while.
Wienert said price cutting and additional marketing contributed to the "very positive news" from the western states.
She warned, however, that the overall health of the visitor industry will depend not only on head counts but on spending per person, which was also a theme at MVB's meeting.
Statewide visitor spending in June was $844 million from visitors who flew in. That represented a missing $161.6 million compared with the past June.
For the year so far, spending statewide has totaled just under $5 billion, representing a missing $882 million, or a drop of 15.1 percent, compared with the year before.
Per person per day spending in June was $175 on Maui and $150 on Oahu. That was a gain for Maui. At the MVB meeting, Executive Director Terryl Vencl noted that earlier this year, Oahu per person per day spending had gotten ahead of Maui, although only by a small amount. That had never happened before.
Lanai and Molokai continued to be affected more adversely than other parts of the state, although the visitors who did come to Lanai in June - 5,414 of them - spent lavishly, at the rate of $352 per person per day. That was up 12.6 percent, although the head count was down 25 percent.
On Molokai, spending was $99.30 per day, a drop of two-fifths, and arrivals were down two-fifths also, to 3,560.
The Maui spending rate was off by 4.6 percent in June.
HTA President and Chief Executive Mike McCartney said, in response to the crisis, the agency has allocated 96 percent of its budget to support marketing-related programs beginning in July. The programs included ''aggressive'' marketing campaigns to stimulate travel from the U.S. West and Japan.
''With heightened marketing efforts and scheduled blitzes on the West Coast and in the Pacific Northwest, we are hopeful that this trend will continue through the fall,'' he said. ''In Japan, we have launched new consumer marketing campaigns to generate bookings.''
He said the state has already begun to see some initial results with 23 flights added in July and August and eight flights added during ''Silver Week'' in September to accommodate Japanese demand.
* The Associated Press contributed to this report. Harry Eagar can be reached at heagar@mauinews.com.
