Visitor numbers show Hawaii’s national parks continue to enthrall

Resting on a bench outside the Haleakala Visitor Center at the 9,740-foot elevation after hiking Keonehe‘ehe‘e Trail, Doug Franz of Goodyear, Ariz., had to pause when asked where Maui’s national park ranked among the many he’s visited.

“I think because of the clouds and the coloration it’s more beautiful than the Grand Canyon, and I never thought I’d be somewhere that’s more beautiful,” he said.

Although Franz, 51, has been to Maui before, Friday was his first trip up the steep, winding highway to Haleakala National Park, accompanied by his 18-year-old daughter McKenna, his mother Deb, 71, of Bellbrook, Ohio, and brother Aaron, 46, of Loveland, Ohio. The family visited the park in the early afternoon when traffic was light and only a dozen or so people were milling about the visitor center overlooking the crater expanse.

“I’m being a little biased because I’m an Arizonan, so I’ll say second, because I do love Grand Canyon,” Franz added.

That same afternoon as crowds jammed the Pearl Harbor National Memorial on Oahu, Matt Clark of Cary, N.C., took a shuttle boat to the USS Arizona Memorial with wife, Erica, and daughters Graelyn, 8, and Ansley, 10.

“Ansley’s in fourth grade, and at school they’re learning all about the value and history of our national parks, so it’s fitting that we take them here to Pearl Harbor, especially on a visit to Hawaii,” he said.

Whether the attraction is visiting the hallowed scene of a pivotal event in U.S. history or exploring Hawaii’s volcanic origins and experiencing its native culture and natural resources, attendance this year at the state’s three major national park sites is on track to surpass 2019 visitor totals, before the COVID-19 pandemic virtually shut down tourism to the islands.

According to National Park Service data, Pearl Harbor National Memorial recorded 1.55 million recreational visits in 2022, up 30% from the previous year; Hawaii Volcanoes National Park saw 1.58 million visits, a 25% increase; and Haleakala had 1.09 million visits, up 27%.

The rise in park attendance last year coincided with a 36% jump in overall visitor arrivals statewide from 2021. Although improving year to year, the 9.25 million Hawaii visitor arrivals in 2022 were still 11% below the 2019 figure, according to the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism, yet the Hawaii Volcanoes and Haleakala parks each bested their 2019 visit totals in 2022, by 15% and 9.4%, respectively.

That was not the case at Pearl Harbor National Memorial, where visits in 2022 fell 10% short of the 1.7 million visits in 2019. However, over the first four months of 2023, attendance was at 558, 193, up 20% from the same period in 2022 and a 4.4% improvement over 2019, the preliminary statistics show.

Attendance is expected to get another boost once travel from Japan and Asia picks up, according to David Kilton, National Park Service interpretation, education and visitor service lead at Pearl Harbor.

Visits to the historic World War II site dropped to 415, 542 in the first year of the pandemic in 2020, when the memorial shut down for several months before reopening with limited capacity. Navy-operated shuttles to the USS Arizona Memorial returned to full capacity of 145 passengers per vessel in late summer 2021 after Hawaii lifted its COVID-19 entry requirements for U.S. travelers in March 2021.

Reservations or tickets are not required to enter the Pearl Harbor Visitor Center and browse the grounds and museums; however, a reservation system was implemented for visits to the USS Arizona Memorial to manage overcrowding and reduce long lines. Reservations for a particular date can be made eight weeks in advance, with half the seats available at that time. The other half are held for release at 3 p.m. the day before. Standby seats also may be available, but it’s no sure thing.

Even with the reservation system in place, some visitors have been frustrated in their attempts to claim a spot.

“It’s still hard especially if you’re trying to rely on the day-before reservations, but our standby is still getting quite a few people,” Kilton said. “So unless we have boats go down with mechanical issues, we’re able to really accommodate most people, except for in those busy days and busy months, like right now with the summer season. Even if everything is running great, we’re just not able to get everyone in, we just have too many visitors. We have 8,000 people a day and we can only put 5,000 on a boat.”

He said the memorial is planning to launch a smartphone app next month to manage standby lists so visitors don’t have to wait in line and can check out exhibits while awaiting notification.

While attendance remains strong, Kilton said he’s noticed a shift in visitor awareness of the memorial’s significance as the events of Dec. 7, 1941, grow more distant.

“We’re having to help provide more knowledge about what the story is and what the site is about,” he said. “We are recognized as one of, if not the, No. 1 tourist attraction on Oahu, if not throughout all Hawaii. And so people are like, ‘We gotta do Pearl Harbor,’ but we are having more and more people come who are not as familiar with what it’s about. Some people go, ‘Oh, it’s just the thing we do as tourists,’ and we go, ‘Let me tell you what this is.’ It’s different from just your general tourist attraction. This is a memorial to honor the loss of life and those who sacrificed and gave all. So that is growing.”

The scope of 2023 visitor statistics from national park sites in Hawaii varies, with Haleakala reporting preliminary data through June and Pearl Harbor through April, but no monthly totals available for Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.

Park Superintendent Rhonda Loh said that based on the $2.73 million in fee revenue from January through June of this year, Hawaii Volcanoes is on track to have roughly the same number of visitors as last year.

Visitation is largely driven by overall visitor arrivals to Hawaii island, she said, and whether an active eruption is occurring, such as last month’s summit eruption within Halemaumau crater.

Loh said several projects over the next couple of years “will improve the visitor experience at the Kilauea summit area.” The U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory and the National Park Service’s Jaggar Museum buildings, badly damaged in the 2018 Kilauea eruption, are due to be removed and the area restored “to a more natural landscape befitting the sacred site,” she said.

The popular observation deck, closed since 2018 due to earthquake damage, will be reopened once repairs and improvements are completed, Loh added, with additional work to include improvements to the park entrance station and a new roundabout on Crater Rim Drive to ease traffic congestion.

After a slower first quarter of 2023, Haleakala National Park attendance in April and May doubled the number of visits over the same months last year, according to Superintendent Natalie Gates, who expects the summer months to continue the trend.

The visit total for May alone was up 117% from the same month in 2022, at 203,272 visits. June visits totaled 157,785, an increase of 62%. The substantial boost in recent visitation was achieved even though a May 10 rockfall on a remote section of Hana Highway and ongoing road work there have limited traffic to the park’s Kipahulu District in East Maui, where visits totaled 123,442 from January through June, down 8% from the same period in 2022.

“It seems like our Asian visitors are coming, and they’ve been missing the last couple of years,” Gates said. ”It just seems like visitation, in general, is up. I live on this island so I can see it.”

To reduce overcrowding during the sunrise hours and encourage visitation throughout the day, the park in 2017 instituted mandatory reservations for entry between 3 and 7 a.m., with slots for 150 vehicles. Now, on some days, crowds have been flocking to the mountaintop to view the sunset. Gates said that on occasions when summit parking lots are full, motorists have been directed to park in lots at lower elevations.

“We have seen an increase in visitation at sunset but it’s not consistent,” she said. “It seems to coincide with holidays and astronomical events like meteor showers or big full moons, and we can see crowds there. We’re looking to staff up at that time of day and also if we have to, to keep people safe, to slow down traffic to the summit.”

Haleakala also switched to cashless fee payment to reduce wait times at the park entrance and has been expanding its solar and nighttime astronomy programs that also cover the park’s geology, ecosystems and cultural history.

Gates said other plans call for creating “informal amphitheaters” for ranger talks, with benches crafted by local students, at Hosmer Grove in the park’s Summit District and at the Kipahulu District.

More ambitious improvements and expansion is expected in the coming years at the Pearl Harbor National Memorial. Kilton said National Park Service officials have been meeting with congressional leaders and others to gain support for roughly $50 million in funding for visitor center projects under a 2027 time frame.

The list includes replacing the theater building that houses two screening rooms and enclosing and expanding the museum buildings to broaden the visitor experience and better protect the artifacts on display from the marine environment.

To enhance visitor offerings, the National Park Service in May 2022 launched Ford Island bus tours that include stops at the USS Utah and USS Oklahoma memorials and six historic officer bungalows. Kilton said preservation and restoration of those sites is continuing.

It was a mixed bag for the three smaller national park units on Hawaii island. Kaloko-Honokohau National Historical Park saw 291,342 visits in 2022, a nearly 11% increase from the previous year. Year-to-date visits through June totaled 148,951, a drop of nearly 2% from the same period in 2022.

Attendance at Pu‘uhonua o Honaunau National Historical Park reached 311,441 last year, up 24%, while the year-to-date total through May was 156,357, up almost 19%.

Pu‘ukohola Heiau National Historic Site recorded 31,603 recreational visits last year, up 30%, while over the first six months of 2023, visits totaled 14,648, down 18% from the same period a year ago.