Barbeques and beach: Memorial Day weekend is the unofficial start to the summer season.
The summer tourism season won’t start until next month, though, at least as far as mainland travelers are concerned.
“Everybody does their close travel over the Memorial Day weekend,” said Ross Birch, president of the Big Island Visitors Bureau. “It’s a lot of drive-to destinations…the mainland will wait till that weekend’s over, and look at somewhere mid-June and end of June to really come (here).”
Tourist arrivals to the Big Island have not changed significantly over last year’s numbers, according to statistics from the Hawaii Tourism Authority, but so far visitor expenditures have increased every month from their 2015 numbers.
California, Washington, Colorado, New York and Florida are the top five states for visitor arrivals statewide.
Birch said he expects more air arrivals from the West Coast this summer in light of an increase in airplane seats — Memorial Day weekend marks the start of seasonal Hawaiian Air routes for Kona-Oakland and Kona-Los Angeles — and, in some cases, decreases in airfare.
“The fares are holding at a decent rate,” he said.
Hawaii Island could also see a boost in visitors from other islands, thanks to Island Air beginning a regular schedule of daily Kona-Honolulu flights in mid-June. The last time Island Air served that route was in 2012.
“From a local’s perspective it’s great,” Birch said. “For us, it’s even better because it allows more flights for our international travelers to catch connecting flights (from Honolulu).”
The Big Island’s international tourism market continues to do well. Birch said that Japanese, Chinese, South Korean and Taiwanese markets have all seen double-digit increases this year.
Passenger counts from cruise ships have “had a pretty steady and slight increase” over previous numbers, he said.
“It’s almost two different types of traveling markets we have,” Birch said. “Cruise ships, we know what kind of cruises and what cruise capacity is two, three years in advance.” With airplanes, “our booking window is anywhere between 60 to 90 days. It’s harder to track, comparatively.”
The HTA reported an 85 percent statewide increase in April cruise ship arrivals over 2015 numbers, attributing the jump to some ships changing their intineraries from March and May arrivals in 2016.