Aug. 8 marked one year since the devastating wildfires on Maui that destroyed much of Lahaina. The anniversary coincided with data showing that Hawaii arrivals have been dropping this year overall, but most precipitously in Maui, where visitation through June was down 23.8%. News editor Johanna Jainchill spoke to Ilihia Gionson, public affairs officer for the Hawaii Tourism Authority (HTA), about reasons for the downturn and how the HTA is marketing Maui and Hawaii overall.
Ilihia Gionson
Q: Anecdotally, have you heard that there has been any improvement during this summer peak season?
A: There does seem to be a sense of optimism that we are in the midst of a recovery. If you take Maui out of the equation, the numbers for the rest of the islands weren't so bad. The better tourism does, the better we as a state and as a community can do to support the recovery of our friends and family on Maui. When we look at some of the drastic drops that we saw in Maui in the months right after the fires, we've come quite a long way. We fully acknowledge that there's more work to be done.
Q: I know the Japan market is influenced by the strong dollar, but what about the drop in U.S. visitors?
A: In some respects, the old yardsticks by which we measured success are out the window. For the first couple of years after the pandemic, we would often compare things to 2019, but we reopened to a very different world with different patterns. Our visitor mix shifted much more domestic because of travel restrictions and just sort of the comfort of folks to travel internationally. That works both ways. Our international markets took time to recover, and a lot of the domestic travelers that we got were choosing Hawaii over international destinations in that reopening period.
So as the market stabilizes a little bit, it's difficult to compare that to other periods in time. Another factor we recognize is price sensitivity; a lot of other markets would love to see our visitors on their shores and are doing various pricing and promotions to make that happen. So we know our work is cut out for us.
Q: If you compare numbers now to 2019, spending is still up, so by that metric things are better.
A: In 2020, we adopted a new strategic plan, this was pre-pandemic, that was really a response to 2019 and the highest number of visitor arrivals ever, at 10.4 million, and hearing some of the community calls to re-examine this. No longer was our effort driven purely by arrival numbers but really optimizing the spending.
In Hawaii, just the state tax revenues attributable to tourism cover our budget for our schools and libraries, a lot of our work in agriculture and economic development and at the Hawaii Tourism Authority. There was $21 billion in spending in 2023, so $2.4 billion in state tax collections. So it's a meaningful contribution in that way.
The kinds of hotel occupancy, the kinds of ADRs that we had before the fire were class-leading, pack-leading, competitive-set-leading, so even a little bit of softness seems very dramatic. I think the main thing when I think about the urgency to really recover the markets is that 200,000 jobs across the Hawaiian Islands are powered by visitor spending.
Q: People I spoke to would like to see more messaging that Maui is open. What is the HTA doing?
A: We have a couple of campaigns specific to Maui, which really put workers and business owners at the center of this invitation and declaration that they're ready to get back to work, they're ready to reopen their long-standing family businesses and start welcoming folks again -- and to let the travel trade know that Maui is open and that coming is caring and to come is to help. Following on to that, we have launched "The people, the place. The Hawaiian Islands," our overall destination campaign, which again, puts local folks at the center of the invitation to come and return and rediscover.