Aug
27
It’s easier to understand the tourism slump if you pay less attention to the percentage declines and more to the actual visitor numbers.
Canadian arrivals are up in double digit percentages, for example, but even now we get five or six visitors from Japan for every visitor from Canada.
Visitor traffic from all of Europe is half what we get from Canada. The same goes for visitors from the South Pacific.
Happy to have them, but even if it did a wildly successful marketing campaign in one of these places the short-term effect would barely make the meter move.
Most of our visitors, and most of our visitor traffic decline, comes from California. More of the decline than you might expect results from lack of cruise ship capacity.
The main point is this. If local hotels, or the state, were to spend millions of dollars in an emergency “come see us” campaign, where should it go and what should it say?
It should go in San Francisco and Los Angeles, which have the largest supply of empty airplane seats flying here, and very large numbers of people who already know Hawaii and would enjoy coming here and are not personally in any sort of economic jam.
The only reason they’re not already coming here is that they’ve been deterred by rising fares and the sheer hassle of getting here, followed by really high hotel room rates when they arrive. And, yes, some may be scared from what they see on CNBC even though they personally are still doing well.
So this is what we need to tell them:
- You know you need a Hawaii vacation.
- Don’t deny yourself, just when hotels are offering great deals.
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[...] arrivals and spending in June and July was because of decline of cruise ship visitors. Howard Dicus echoes these same sentiments He also provided suggestions on how best to jump start Hawaii’s tourism [...]
Howard,
I met my wife at the “Ukelele Sessions’ held in front of the original Outrigger hotel under the kokua tree in 1960. We have been married 48 years and come back to Waikiki 2 times per year for the last 32 years.
What you say about us Californian’s is correct. We can go to mexico cheaper and easier, but you can’t drink the water and the crime is horrendous. AND I love aloha shirts.
In the first few years after college we couldnt afford much but came anyway.
now we can afford the prices at “The Royal” and have stayed there for the last 15 years.
We can’t wait for their new opening. We will be there in april/2008. We are renting a condo at the waikiki shores for ‘christmas.
NOw that I have found your blogs I will be a daily reader.
Please show some “Progress photo’s” of the royal hawaiian hotel. I can get some live shots from the Outrigger hotel waikiki webcam. but can’t see enough.
Please post photo’s of what’s happening from the beach side of the royal.
Thanks a new resder
Hadley