Continued slowing in the state’s visitor industry has prompted tourism officials to downgrade this year’s visitor arrivals goal to 8.4 million tourists and its spending target to $15.1 billion.
The less ambitious goals, which were announced during a spring tourism marketing update on Wednesday at the Hawai‘i Convention Center, assume that the state will be able to attract about 310,255 fewer visitors to Hawaii this year than originally targeted and that the visitors who come will spend about a billion less than what the state had earlier anticipated.
The new arrivals goal still tops last year’s record 8.24 million arrivals by 2.5 percent. However, HTA Vice President of Brand Management David Uchiyama said the figure represents further contraction in the pace of growth, which began leveling off in the second half of 2013. Likewise, the new spending goal is 3.9 percent higher than the $14.5 billion in spending that Hawaii realized in 2013; however, it’s 6.1 percent below the HTA’s earlier 2014 spending target.
"North America is expected to be flat this year and that hurts, because it’s our largest market," Uchiyama said. "All of our other markets are primarily showing growth, but most are not as aggressive as our earlier projections."
The new arrival’s goal for the state’s core U.S. West market is just under the 3.22 million tourists attained from that market in 2013, and it’s 2.4 percent lower than the original 2014 target. Likewise, the new U.S. West spending target of $4.8 billion is 1.4 percent higher than last year’s actual spending but 4.2 percent below the HTA’s earlier goal.
Tourism officials also have lackluster expectations for Hawaii’s second-largest visitor market, the U.S. East. They’ve decreased their arrivals aim from the U.S. East by 4 percent to 1.69 million, which is flat against the 2013 results. The HTA’s spending aspiration for the U.S. East also was reduced by 6.6 percent to $3.6 billion, which is only a 1.3 percent gain from the 2013 result.
The HTA is keeping its Japan goals aggressive with the hope of attaining the 2 million visitor benchmark that officials along with the Japan Association of Travel Agents pledged to reach in 2016. However, while the HTA’s goal of bringing 1.62 million visitors to Hawaii from Japan in 2014 is 6.3 percent above the 2013 tourist count, it’s 5 percent lower than the previous 2014 target. Likewise, the HTA is hopeful that visitors from Japan will spend $2.7 billion — a figure that is 8.5 percent above the 2013 actual but 11 percent lower than the earlier 2014 goal.
"We can still reach the 2 million benchmark, but the industry must know that we have fallen behind and we need to step it up," Uchiyama said.
Separately, the HTA announced Wednesday the hiring of Argentina-based Focus Latam to market Hawaii in Latin America, a new source market that the HTA expects will contribute 40,000 visitors and $97 million in spending to the state in 2014.
"We see promise in Latin America and will work on gradually growing this market," Uchiyama said. "While we need to continue to cultivate our core markets, it’s important that we identify other growth markets and work to develop them so that our market is stronger and more diversified."
