As tourism is a key component to Hawaii’s economy, the state government keeps detailed statistics on visitor arrivals, how long they stay and how much they spend. The most complete published report is from 2007. It’s 167 pages of more detail than you could ever want to know about Hawaii visitors. So, let’s glean some interesting statistics from this monster report.
– 7,627,819 people visited Hawaii in 2007. Now let’s look at which islands they visited, noting that visitors can and do island hop:
- Oahu: 4,823,874
- Maui: 2,580,361
- Hawaii’s Big Island: 1,739,458
- Kauai: 1,372,682
- Lanai: 105,499
- Molokai: 86,579
– The average length of stay was 9.19 days
– The average party size traveling to Hawaii was 2.14 people.
– 59.7% of people travel independently to Hawaii, e.g. not traveling to Hawaii on a package or organized tour.
– 82% of visitors came to Hawaii for the purposes of vacation, honeymoon or getting married.
– The highest amounts of visitors came in June, July, August, and December. The least visited months were April, May, September, October and November. (Note: the least visited months are really some of the best times to visit Hawaii.)
As you probably already know the economy has curtailed travel worldwide and Hawaii has certainly felt those effects. So, as we look at these 2007 statistics, bear in mind that the current numbers are down, probably somewhere in the range of about 10%.
If you are nerdy like me, you can drill down in the 2007 Hawaii visitors report for much more detail. If perusing the 2007 report isn’t enough for you, then you can access the annual reports from 1999 here. Please comment if you find something interesting from the report. Also, please comment if you were a part of the 2007 statistics. I was. Andy and I were independent visitors to Maui, Molokai, and Lanai that year.
Sheila Beal
10 comments
Is it safe to assume these stats come from those forms we get to fill out when on the plane somewhere over the Pacific Ocean?
Good stuff. The 9.19 day average length was a little surprising, I thought it might have been lower.
hard to believe almost as many people visit Kauai as the Big Island
Rick
@ Kris – I do believe that form is the source for most of the data. I don’t know where else they’d get it. Since the back of the form is optional, the data can’t be 100% accurate, but I guess comparing year to year for trends is like comparing apples to apples. I was also surprised with the 9.19 days of stay. I’ve gone for a few as 5 days and as many as 14 days. How about you?
@ Rick – just curious, why do you find that hard to believe? For the life of me, I can’t figure out why more people don’t visit the Big Island to see the active lava flow. I mean, can it get any more exciting than that?!
Our shortest trip was only 9 days, which was our first to Maui. All the others to Maui have been 13-14 days, with our honeymoon trip being 10 days split between Oahu/Kauai.
The trip we’re planning in September for the Maui Photo Festival is only going to be 7-8 days, so that will actually be our shortest trip yet.
My parents only stayed a week visiting us on Oahu. I tried to convince her one week wasn’t enough. When it was time to go she said I was right. She was just getting to learn her way around
Rick
I would like to know how many of these tourists came for the world class surf? Does anyone know where I could find that information?
Sorry, Sterling, I have no idea where you might find that sort of data.
Let me know what the best hotel rates by the week in oahu
See the general trend here: https://govisithawaii.com/2014/06/09/infographic-hawaii-hotel-trends/
This site is very helpful it helped me with the school project that I’m doing about Hawaii.