The latest tourism data for Hawaii shows the Aloha State continues to enjoy year-over-year visitor gains and increased spending.
Visitors spent $1.3 billion in the islands in April, a 9% increase over the same period in 2016, and the total number of visitors for the month was up 7.5%, according to the Hawaii Tourism Authority. Part of the boost was attributed to Easter landing in April this year rather than March, as in 2016.
Hawaii's four largest markets have all shown year-over-year gains in visitor spending for the first four months of 2017. The U.S. West demonstrated the largest increase, with a 16.4% bump to bring total spending to $2 billion, followed by Japan (15.8%), U.S. East (10.3%) and Canada (9.1%).
The Japanese market continues to help augment Hawaii's 2017 tourism numbers, with new service to Kona and Honolulu contributing to the numbers. Visitors from Japan were up 8.4% in April, and spending also rose, by 4.6%.
In other regions, reduced airline seat capacity brought the visitor numbers from Australia and Korea down, according to the HTA. After declines in the first three months of the year, arrivals from Mexico, Brazil and Argentina rebounded with a 15.5% increase in April.