Editorial: Hotel occupancy drops again

Ho, ho, humbug. The visitor rush that Hawaii’s tourism industry hoped to see is not among its holiday gifts, according to the hotel company STR.

When prospects of pandemic recovery looked good in July, statewide hotel occupancy reached 82.4%, but the effects of the delta variant dropped it down almost nine points in a month, and then below 60% for three months.

And while no one wants more bad news at Christmas, it must be noted that these data points were collected before the rise of omicron. Humbug, indeed.