Blog: www.kgmb9.com/howard

Video Headline: Visitor Arrivals

The wrap-up report on May hotel business puts the state tourism slowdown into sharper focus. Visitor arrivals fell 6% from year-before levels. Visitor traffic nationwide fell 50% more than that, by the way. But while the number of Hawaii visitors was falling 6%, hotel occupancy was falling less than 1 percentage point, from 69 to 68 percent. Hospitality Advisors explains that much of the slowdown has been at sea, on NCL. And those passengers tended to stay only a night or two on land. The land-based tourism situation is healthier. This is also suggests that other airlines did take up much of the slack after ATA and Aloha shut down, not by adding flights but simply by flying fuller. I've mentioned before that United, the designated carrier for arriving NCL passengers, did not take any capacity out of the market after NCL cut back from three ships to one. Room rates in May did not rise much from year-before levels -- maybe 2% on average -- but revenue per available room did rise fractionally. The report also notes that Oahu rooms rates rose more than the state average and revenue per available room rose more than 6% in part because of a 36% increase in visitors from Canada. So if Waikiki flew fuller, were there areas softer than the statewide picture? Yes -- the luxury coasts of Kohala and West Maui were down noticeably. Maui's Wailea coast bucked the trend by gaining guests.

Other Headlines:

American Airlines flew fewer than 12 billion revenue passenger miles in June. Compared to the same time last year, U-S capacity was down 3% but traffic was down 5%. Continental says its U-S traffic was down 4%. More June traffic reports due today.

News media in the Caribbean say Dave Banmiller, the last CEO of Aloha Airlines, is on a short list to head Air Jamaica. Banmiller ran it before, but whether he wants to run it again could be another story. Air Jamaica has lost money under everyone who's run it for many years, including Banmiller and someone whose name may be familiar, Bruce Nobles, a former Hawaiian CEO.

Wall Street jumped out the window again, after crude oil spurted to 144 dollars a barrel. Even with a little bargain-hunting just ahead of the long weekend, the component stocks of the Dow Jones industrials have lost more than 20% of their entire value since last October. General Motors lost 15% of its value in one day and closed below 10 dollars for the first time Eisenhower was president.

Standard & Poor's, which tracks economic trends for its bond rating service, sees Hawaii and Puerto Rico especially vulnerable to soaring fuel prices. S&P cites the direct impact, plus indirect fallout from airline travails. And you thought all we had in common with Puerto Rico was coqui frogs.

---