LIHUE — Reports of a record tourism year has everyone cheering, but some hotel management officials say reaching 2007 visitor and revenue levels still falls short of their long-term goals.
The Hawaii Tourism Authority report released Thursday revealed that the state tourism economy reached a record $14.5 billion in annual visitor expenditures last year and contributed $1.5 billion in state tax revenue.
The Kauai visitor spending reached $1.5 billion in the same period.
“While we are pleased that we surpassed our 2012 record numbers, we fell short of our 2013 targets,” stated HTA President and CEO Mike McCartney. “Fluctuations in currency exchange rates, taxes and fuel surcharges have slowed bookings and hampered growth, causing a leveling off throughout the second half of 2013.”
HTA anticipates the trend to continue into the first half of 2014.
“In order to diversify our markets, we continue to pivot our focus toward Asia and other developing markets,” he said.
Kauai Visitors Bureau Executive Director Sue Kanoho said visitor arrivals for the month of December were down 6.5 percent but that Kauai finished the year up 2.7 percent. This compares to arrival increases of 1.2 percent for the Big Island and 2.3 percent for Maui.
“We were pleased to see total expenditures were up 12.6 percent to $1.5 billion for the year and the per person, per day spending was also up 8.3 percent for the year,” Kanoho said.
The per-person, per-day spending increased to $171, while arrivals reached 1.1 million. The growth experienced in 2013 on Kauai is indicative of the HTA’s efforts to distribute visitors across all of the Hawaiian Islands.
With the softening of the U.S. West market, Kanoho said the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau and its island chapters are working on a market saturation promotion for the San Francisco and Oakland markets.
“The only market that was up in the month of December was Canada with a 15.6 percent increase in visitor arrivals, reaffirming that our snow birds love to get away from the cold in the winter months,” Kanoho said.
HTA offers a top-line analysis but businesses work off a bottom line, so the numbers need some perspective, said Chip Bahouth, general manager of the 400-room Sheraton Kauai Resort in Poipu.
“Yes, 2013 was a good year, but not from a profit standpoint,” Bahouth said. “There is still room to grow and a continuing need to grow that revenue. We are healthier than in 2012 and 2011 and we are not in cardiac arrest like 2008, but we still need to do more.”
The goals now are to draw business groups to Kauai and capture more of the global share at premium rates.
“It’s all about getting the premium dollar,” he said.
