Visitors to Hawaii continued to decline in July, although the downturn was offset by strengthening in arrivals from Hawaii’s core U.S. West market and from Japan, Hawaii’s top international market.
But the late-summer travel boost, which mostly affected Oahu, is already showing signs of cooling as Hawaii moves past the important Labor Day travel period into fall. The Transportation Security Administration is preparing to screen a record volume of more than 17 million people nationwide from Thursday through Wednesday. The peak travel day is projected to be Friday, when TSA expects to screen 2.
86 million people. While summer travel to Hawaii has been down in the wake of the Maui wildfires, TSA had been expecting higher volumes of travelers for Hawaii, too. Still, members of Hawaii’s visitor industry say softness has been present in Hawaii’s visitor industry since the Aug.
8, 2023, Maui wildfires, and even in July, Maui’s more than 20% drop in visitor arrivals and nearly 18% decrease in spending were dragging down the statewide tourism performance, according to preliminary statistics released Thursday by the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism. It’s been more than a year since the deadly wildfires that destroyed much of Lahaina, yet the dampening continues to affect tourism performance statewide. To be sure, arrivals to the Hawaiian Islands dropped 1% year over year to 925,935 visitors, DBEDT said.
And, even though July was a better month t.