A total of 871,870 people visited the Hawaiian Islands in December 2022, marking a 91.5% improvement from the same month in 2019, just before COVID-19 started to rage across the land.
The Hawaii Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism (DBEDT) released preliminary statistics that showed visitors spent $1.90 billion in December 2022, an 8.2% increase compared to $1.75 billion spent by visitors in December 2019.
“It is encouraging to see improvement in our international visitor markets,” DBEDT Director Chris Sadayasu said in a release. “December 2022 visitor arrivals from Japan (36,988) and Canada (58,361) were at the highest monthly levels since the start of the pandemic.
"Overall, 2022 international visitors that arrived by air recovered 41.3% from 2019, and U.S. visitors were 12.9% higher than the 2019 level,” Sadayasu added.
According to DBEDT statistics, 858,110 visitors arrived in December 2022 by air service, mainly from the U.S. West Coast and East Coast. Also, 13,761 visitors arrived by cruise ships. The average length of stay by all visitors in December 2022 was 9.49 days, up from 9.27 days (+2.4%) in December 2019.
The only discouraging numbers came from the visitation of tourists from Japan. There were 36,988 visitors from Japan in December 2022 compared to 136,635 visitors (-72.9%) in December 2019. The DBEDT hopes those numbers will improve.
“With the continued appreciation of the Japanese yen, we expect to see a significant improvement in the Japanese market in 2023,” Sadayasu said in the release.