A 27 percent gain in visitors from Japan last month bodes well for this weekend’s start of Golden Week, traditionally a high-volume period for Japanese tourists in Hawaii.
Golden Week, which runs from today to May 6 this year, is usually robust for Hawaii because visitors from Japan can take advantage of the alignment of four holidays in five working days. Last year, however, visitor arrivals from Japan dropped 22.5 percent in April 2011 from a year earlier. The Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11 and tsunami that followed caused many tourists to cancel Golden Week trips to Hawaii.
What a difference a year makes. As many as 114,055 visitors from Japan came to the isles last month, exceeding Japanese tourist counts in March 2008, 2009 and 2010. The 25.3 percent rise in total visitor spending from Japan last month also pointed to a recovering market and the potential for Golden Week to regain some of its former luster, said David Uchiyama, HTA’s vice president of brand management. The $186.8 million spent by Japanese tourists in Hawaii last month represented the 10th straight month of growth since June 2011, he said.
While last year’s Golden Week actually came in better than anticipated considering the downturn, this year’s is sure to be better, Uchiyama said.
“We can confidently say that we are recovering from the great disaster. We are trending ahead of 2010, and the momentum that we have seen going forward is positive,” he said.
The Japan visitor market in Hawaii is doing better than last year, when Golden Week fell during the month following the disaster, which saw the brunt of the drop-off, Uchiyama said. Arrivals from Japan were up 2.1 percent last month over March 2010. Still, this year’s Japanese arrivals will be well below the one-year peak of 2.1 million Japanese visitors who came to Hawaii in 1997, he said.
“We still have far to go,” he said. “We are recovering, but I don’t think that you could say that we have recovered.”
Japan Airlines reported last week that its passenger traffic forecast for Hawaii is up 2.5 percent for the 10-day Golden Week period. As of last week the carrier was anticipating 25,503 passenger reservations on planes bound for Hawaii and load factors of 84 percent.
The strength of the yen will attract travelers to resort destinations like Hawaii and Guam, as well as Southeast Asia, JAL reported. Japan Travel Bureau, which controls about a third of Hawaii’s wholesale Japan travel market, also has said that it expects Japanese Golden Week travelers to Hawaii will increase by 5.6 percent to 38,000.
“The way that the holidays fall in Japan has created a longer holiday period rather than two shorter ones, and that’s good for longer-haul destinations like Hawaii,” said Barry Wallace, executive vice president of hospitality services for Outrigger Enterprises Group. “We are seeing more of a Golden Week pickup in Hawaii and less of a pickup in Guam.”
Jerry Gibson, area vice president for Hilton Hawaii and general manager of the Hilton Hawaiian Village Resort & Spa, said the hotel chain’s partners in Japan are optimistic about Golden Week and beyond.
“The yen is still strong, and we are seeing more charter and fixed (scheduled) flights,” he said. “All signs are pointing in the right direction.”
