HONOLULU (Island News) –“All the indicators show that everything is moving up, so we’re excited, I think we’re doing the right things, the partners in the hotel industry are doing the right things”, said James Kunane Tokioka, Director of the Dept. of Business, Economic Dev. and Tourism in Hawaii.
According to the latest reports, there were reportedly well over 700,000 visitors to the Hawaiian Islands last month, marking a growth of 5.4 percent.
Total visitor spending was $1.58 billion dollars, up 6.2 percent compared to October 2023.
“We see the travel coming back, it’s getting better and better every year, the scale is going up and up and up, but we’re still not anywhere near the 2019 numbers so, we are focused on that, there are over two million hula dancers in Japan, that’s more than the entire state of Hawaii, and ukelele players are a lot of that too, we know they love Hawaii, we know they love our culture, it’s just a matter of when the yen gets stronger, they’ll be back”, stated Tokioka.
Some tourists are still reeling from the Maui challenges, following the wildfires.
Alan Crawford is visiting Honolulu from Edmonton, Alberta, his scheduled trip last year to Maui was refunded.
This year he opted to stay at an Air B&B. Largely pleased, he does have one request.
“The parking app would be nice if it was available on the Canadian app store”, said Crawford.
“Longtime tourism industry worker in Honolulu Alex Figler shared, “There are different promotions going on throughout the different companies, so know where you want to go, stay loyal to the brands you’re with – some companies are doing cyber Monday deals, coming up into the new year so, you’ll be getting a lot of deals there, if you book directly, you’ll get your best deals from them.”
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