February 2011 proved to be a good month for Hawaii tourism.
In February, Hawaii saw total visitor expenditures of approximately $1 billion, an 18.7 percent increase in visitor spending totals from February 2010. It was the second consecutive month that total visitor spending surpassed results from the banner year of 2007, when visitor total spending was $999.97 million in February 2007.
Total visitor expenditures for the first two months of 2011 were $2.2 billion, an increase of 19.3 percent compared to the same period in 2010, according to preliminary statistics released by the Hawaii Tourism Authority.
The HTA attributed the growth in visitor spending for the month of February 2011 to higher average daily visitor spending and an 11.7 percent increase in total visitor arrivals to 593,018 travelers.
Total arrivals by air rose 11.8 percent from numbers seen in February 2010, to 578,634 visitors. Visitor arrivals from Canada (19.7 percent), the Western U.S. (11.8 percent) and the Eastern U.S. (10.9 percent) showed double-digit growth while arrivals from Japan increased 8.2 percent from last February. Arrivals by cruise ships grew 6.2 percent to 14,384 visitors.
For the first two months of 2011, total visitor days for all visitors increased by 11.9 percent compared to year-to-date 2010, and total arrivals rose 11.9 percent, to 1,190,506 visitors.
Of all the islands, the Big Island of Hawaii saw the largest growth in total visitor arrivals during the month of February with an increase of 14 percent from February 2010, and more visitors also chose to spend their vacation time exclusively on the Big Island compared to statistics from February 2010.
Visit www.HawaiiTourismAuthority.org.
