LIHUE — Visitors to the Hawaiian Islands spent a total of $1.4 billion in February, a decrease of 2.7 percent compared to February 2018, according to preliminary statistics released Thursday by the Hawaii Tourism Authority.
A total of 782,584 visitors came to Hawaii in February, up slightly, 0.5 percent, from the same month last year. Total visitor days also declined, down 1.9 percent, versus February 2018, due to a shorter average length of stay by visitors from most markets.
It was a similar story on Kauai, which saw 104,167 visitors in February, down 0.2 percent from February 2018. For the first two months of the year, Kauai has had 210,231 visitors, according to HTA, a 1.4 percent decline from the same time period last year.
Visitor spending, however, rose 4.7 percent in February, to $153.5 million. But for the first two months of the year, visitor spending totaled $329.9 million on Kauai, down 1.4 percent, compared to the same time frame in 2018.
Visitors to Kauai are also not staying as long this year.
In February, Kauai visitors stayed on average 7.63 days, down from 7.77 days for February 2018. For the first two months of the year, visitors stayed, on average, 8.17 days on Kauai, down from 8.31 days for the first two months of last year.
Visitor spending on Oahu decreased (down 1.6 percent to $613 million) while visitor arrivals (456,820) were flat compared to last February.
Maui recorded increases in both visitor spending (up 1.2 percent to $413 million) and visitor arrivals (plus 1.5 percent to 220,801).
The island of Hawaii saw declines in visitor spending (down 17.5 percent to $192.3 million) and visitor arrivals (down 14.8 percent to 137,502).
In February, visitor spending increased from the U.S. West (plus 4.7 percent to $503.3 million) but declined from U.S. East (down 6.7 percent to $370.9 million), Japan (down 0.8 percent to $170.1 million), Canada (down 0.7 percent to $150.7 million) and all other international markets (plus 15.3 percent to $188.7 million) compared to a year ago.
