Where do I find tourism statistics for the State of Hawaii?

The Research and Economic Analysis Division of the Dept. of Business, Economic Development and Tourism is responsible for surveying and calculating statistics about tourism in Hawaii. The Division also analyzes the impact of tourism on Hawaii’s economy by examining the contribution of the visitor industry to the gross state product, the number of jobs resulting from tourism, its impact on household income and state and local revenues.

The visitor statistics include the number of domestic and international visitors to Hawaii from major market areas in the mainland United States as well as foreign locations, such as Japan and Canada. Characteristics include islands visited, length of stay, purpose of trip, accommodations and expenditures. There are additional statistics on cruise ships, number of air seats and hotel occupancy. The data are published monthly and include year-to-date calculations. The release date is usually the last week of the month for the previous month’s data. The data also appear in the
Annual Visitor Research Report
 and in a more abbreviated form in Chapter 7 of the
State of Hawaii Data Book
 .

The
Visitor Plant Inventory
 is an annual survey of vacation properties. It lists properties by name with the number of units available per property for all the islands. There is also information on planned construction and renovation.

Explanations of the visitor data as well as tourism’s impact on Hawaii’s economy are included in the following publications:

New Measures of Tourism (
Hawaii’s Economy
 , February, 2001)

Tourism Looks to the Future (
Hawaii’s Economy
 , July 1999)

Hawaii Tourism in Transition (
Hawaii’s Economy
 , 1st Quarter, 1996)

The Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau also publishes DBEDT’s visitor data on a monthly basis along with additional marketing information on topics such as golf and Japanese honeymoon trends. HVCB’s primary responsibility is marketing Hawaii as a visitor destination.

The Hawaii Tourism Authority is responsible for policy and planning information related to the visitor industry.

PKF Worldwide is an additional source of hotel occupancy and sales information. Their monthly publication is
Trends in the Hotel Industry-Hawaii
 .

LINKS: