Get ready for 10 million tourists.

The state’s rampaging visitor industry could top that benchmark this year.

That’s the message in the latest tourism numbers released Thursday. The report showed March — not typically a peak month for tourist arrivals — set the record for the most visitors in a single month at 903,550.

March beat the previous record of 891,878, set in July. If Hawaii can do that in March, exceeding 10 million visitors this year seems well within reach. Last year a record 9.38 million tourists came to Hawaii.

What’s driving the growth is added airline seats, tourism executives say. And Southwest Airlines’ statement Thursday that it hopes to start service to the islands later this year did nothing to alter that view.

“If Southwest Airlines begins service, we will blow through the 10 million mark,” said Jack Richards, CEO and president of Pleasant Holidays.

Southwest Airlines announced Thursday that it plans to begin flying to airports in Honolulu, Lihue, Kona and Kahului this year.

A shift in this year’s Easter holiday schedule to March instead of April accounted for some of the increase last month. But mostly, the results correlated to a nearly 12 percent rise in the trans-Pacific air seats available in March, which totaled nearly 1.2 million, a new record for any month.

The Hawaii Tourism Authority, which released the March report, is expecting carriers to add more than 600,000 new seats to the Hawaii market in 2018. While all the additions aren’t in place, what’s here already has catapulted Hawaii tourism to new heights.

Richards said if airline passenger gains hold, total fiscal year 2018 visitors “will definitely exceed 10 million for the first time.”

“Unless there’s a catastrophe or they (the airlines) pull seats out of the market, Hawaii tourism is going to have its best year ever,” Richards said.

Jennifer Chun, HTA’s director of research, said so far this year Hawaii is running ahead of the state Department of Business and Economic Development’s visitor forecast, which anticipates 9.6 million arrivals by year’s end.

“It’s possible that Hawaii tourism could hit 10 million visitors this year provided that the airlines, including Southwest, continue to add seats,” Chun said.

Any growth this year would be on top of the gains that have occurred over the past six years of record-setting arrivals and spending. The tourism juggernaut is the pride of HTA and great news for those who depend on the state’s tourism economy. It’s meant more jobs, greater private investment in Hawaii, higher tax collections, increased spending in the community and more money in state coffers.

Jerry Gibson, area vice president of Hilton Hawaii and vice president of Turtle Bay resort, said the hotel industry’s recent successes have created trickle-down economic benefits across the state.

“For the first quarter, I would tell you that Hawaii’s hotels are very, very happy,” Gibson said. “High occupancy keeps people working and gives them an opportunity to earn overtime. It creates a sustainable economy for hundreds of thousands of people in Hawaii.”

However, Kahuku resident Choon James is less enthusiastic about the increases, which to her have meant more traffic, fewer parking spots, crowded beaches, worn hiking trails, noisy helicopters and airplanes, and strained infrastructure. Tourism demand also has encouraged the sprawl of vacation rentals into neighborhoods, straining housing and changing the fabric of communities, James said.

“A lot of times the tourism board seems to live in a parallel universe from the local people,” she said. “As a whole islanders are very welcoming people, but the welcome can wear pretty thin when it’s a 24/7 kind of invasion.”

Carrying capacity is even becoming a challenge for some in the visitor industry.

Cindy Orlando, superintendent for Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park, said the park broke a 2 million-visitor benchmark last year — which has proved to be good and bad. Spending by those visitors supported 2,020 jobs and brought a cumulative economic benefit of $222 million to the local economy, Orlando said.

On the other hand, “we don’t want so many visitors that the resources are impacted and the infrastructure can’t handle serving them. We want them to have a quality experience and a safe experience,” she said.

Keith Vieira, principal of KV & Associates, Hospitality Consulting, said carrying capacity is a fair concern for the community. However, Vieira said the state’s challenges with high costs necessitate ensuring that tourism, the state’s top economic driver, stays strong.

He added, “There’s a lot at stake if we lose momentum.”