Tourism performance continued to increase in August, but the percentage gain in visitor spending was the lowest since May 2016 and the total was the lowest collected for any month this year.

Statewide visitor arrivals increased more than 3 percent to 845,072 visitors in August while spending rose more than 1 percent to $1.4 billion, according to statistics released Thursday by the Hawaii Tourism Authority. Total visitor days rose nearly 4 percent so that the number of visitors on any given day in August was 235,963.

The August gains kept arrivals, visitor spending and visitor days on track with the state Department of Business, Economic Development &Tourism’s third-quarter forecast that came out in August. However, daily spending and scheduled air seats dipped below the pace needed to meet DBEDT’s full-year forecast.

“We expected better results for this peak travel month,” HTA President and CEO George Szigeti said in a statement. “Hurricane Lane deterred a segment of travelers from staying in the Hawaiian Islands, which was compounded by the continuing negative effect Kilauea volcano had on the island of Hawaii.”

Monthly visitor spending fell from Japan, but increased from the U.S. West, U.S. East, Canada and for all other international markets. Monthly visitor arrivals increased from the U.S. West and U.S. East, but declined from Japan and Canada and was flat for the all other international markets category.

In August, Oahu and Kauai experienced monthly increases in arrivals and visitor spending. Maui posted monthly arrivals growth but experienced a decline in spending. Hawaii island saw decreases in monthly spending and arrivals.

The fluctuations in arrivals occurred despite a 6 percent gain in trans-Pacific air seats, which added seats from the U.S. West, U.S. East, Oceania, Other Asia, U.S. West, Canada and Japan and grew to nearly 1.2 million in August.

“These figures are a reminder as to how vulnerable tourism can be to events beyond our control and why we can never assume the impressive rates of growth Hawaii was achieving the first half of this year will continue unabated for the foreseeable future,” Szigeti said.

Keith Vieira, principal at KV &Associates, Hospitality Consulting, said August’s results should not be downplayed.

“I expect we’ll see lower growth if we see any growth at all through the end of the year,” Vieira said. “There are bigger issues at hand than people are recognizing. If air seats are available and pace is down, that’s hard to turn around with our lack of large corporate groups. We’ve got challenges ahead of us and we need to work together to stop the downturn and drive more people to the destination.”

Elizabeth Churchill, owner of The Churchill Group LLC, said it’s concerning that the current state of Hawaii tourism seems to be characterized by “more visitors, staying longer and spending less.”

“The HTA mandate was to concentrate on growing spending, not visitor arrivals,” Churchill said. “For a while we were going in the right direction, but we now seem to be going in the reverse.”

Despite growth softening somewhat in August, Szigeti said Hawaii continued to pace ahead of last year’s record through the first eight months of 2018.

Year-to-date through August, statewide visitor spending rose nearly 9 percent to just over $12 billion. Year-to-date, total visitor arrivals grew more than 7 percent to about 6.8 million visitors, with growth from the U.S. West, U.S. East, Japan, Canada, and the combined category from other international markets, which includes all foreign visitors outside of Japan and Canada.