Hawaii hotels kicked off the year with a softer start than expected, but this week’s endpoint for the state’s Safe Travels program is expected to help the industry slide into a more robust summer.

Tennessee-based STR, a hotel analytic company, released data Friday that showed that occupancy at Hawaii hotels in February was at 72.1%. The results were nearly 137% better than in 2021 — but 12.6 percentage points below February 2020, when occupancy was 84.7%.

February 2020 was the month before the pandemic upended travel forecasts. After Hawaii reported its first COVID-19 case on March 6, 2020, the visitor industry began tanking, especially hotels. Visitor arrivals have been picking up this year, but the travelers aren’t necessarily booking a corresponding amount of hotel rooms.

Safe Travels Hawaii recorded that some 601,264 visitors came to the islands in February. In comparison, the Hawaii Tourism Authority reported that 235,283 visitors traveled to the state by air service in February 2021. In February 2020, 828,056 visitors arrived by air and cruise ship.

Jerry Gibson, president of the Hawaii Hotel Alliance, said Hawaii hoteliers had hoped to fill more rooms in February, but pointed out that the continued low count of international visitors as well as travelers coming for meetings, conventions and incentive trips pulled down the results. Gibson said international and group business travelers are more prone to fill hotels than other visitor segments.

“The neighbor islands are winning the day. But Oahu, which depends the most on international travelers and group business, is a little behind,” Gibson said.

Indeed, while STR data shows that Hawaii’s hotel performance in February was better than last year on all islands, results were mixed when compared with pre-pandemic times.

The good news is that the statewide average daily room rate has held its own, rising to almost $351 — a 13% increase over February 2020. Still, the higher room rates weren’t enough to offset the occupancy drop, which caused statewide revenue per available room, or RevPAR, to decrease to $253, a 3.8% decline from February 2020. RevPAR is considered by many in the hotel industry as the key performance measure as it is the rate that a room rents for regardless of occupancy status.

Gibson said as Hawaii has moved into travel tied to school-related spring break, hotel performance has improved.

“We’ve also started to see a pickup since the end of Safe Travels was announced. Some people, especially the older generation, didn’t want the hassle of traveling with restrictions. It will be easier for them now,” he said. “Pent-up demand is starting to fill summer.” All Safe Travels COVID-19 restrictions are expected to lift at 11:59 p.m. Friday.

Lynette Eastman, general manger of the Surfjack Hotel &Swim Club, said she’s been seeing more confidence in the market as well as signs that a swell in visitor arrivals tallies may be imminent.

“The leisure travel market is getting stronger for us,” Eastman said. “We have had a phenomenal first quarter, but March is when those in our competitive set start to close the gap, too. I look at the numbers daily, and they are pretty impressive.”

Hawaii’s hotel industry might not have begun the year as robust as some might like, but as the year moves on, it’s expected to outpace national industry expectations.

The American Hotel &Lodging Association’s 2022 State of the Hotel Industry Report has forecast that the U.S. hotel industry “will continue moving toward recovery in 2022, but the path will be uneven and potentially volatile, and full recovery is still several years away.”

Chip Rogers, president and CEO of AHLA, said in a statement, “Hotels have faced enormous challenges over the past two years, and we are still a long way from full recovery. The uncertainty about the omicron variant suggests just how difficult it will be to predict travel readiness in 2022, adding to the challenges hotels are already facing.”

Further, he said, “The slow return of business travel and fewer meetings and events continue to have a significant negative impact on our industry.”

Nationwide hotel room revenues are projected to reach $168 billion, within 1% of 2019 figures and an increase of 19% compared with 2021, AHLA said. Occupancy is projected to hit 63.4%, nearing the 66.0% rate achieved in 2019 and far above the 44% and 57.6% reached in 2020 and 2021, respectively.

AHLA expects that hotels this year will see growth in leisure and “bleisure” travelers — those who blend business and leisure travel. The eventual return of international travelers to the U.S. also could give Hawaii hotels a lift.

Even so, Gibson cautioned that Hawaii hotels “aren’t out of the woods.”

While coronavirus cases seem to be winding down, Gibson said, pandemic trends will have to be carefully monitored.

The ever-growing popularity of vacation rentals, some legal, some not, also has had a tremendous effect on the hotel market, he said.

In 2021, hotels, which supply nearly 54% of the lodging in the state, saw their unit count dip to 43,096, a 1% drop from 2020. However, vacation rental units grew 2% to 14,589 units in 2021. That’s more than 18% of all the supply of visitor lodging in the state.

Short-term rental enforcement has even caught the attention of Hawaii Tourism Authority President and CEO John De Fries, who on Monday published a letter affirming his support for Bill 41, which specifies Hono­lulu’s short-term rental rules and is scheduled to go before the Honolulu City Council at 9 a.m. Wednesday.