Trouble in paradise: Cash-strapped tourists avoid Hawaii
LAHAINA, Maui -- Every winter, scores of humpback whales trade the Gulf of Alaska for a few months of breeding, birthing and basking in Hawaii — a follow-the-sun migration that fuels much of the tourism industry in this former 19th-century whaling town.
But while the marine giants are returning right on schedule this year, their cash-strapped human admirers are not. And the effect of that absence is, "in a four-letter word, ugly," says Bill Seidl, a boat captain who peddles whale-watch trips on the Lahaina waterfront.
"I've been here 20 years, and I've never seen it this bad," adds Seidl, who says sales are down by at least 50% despite "early bird" discounts that linger all day.
Symbols of the global financial meltdown are ubiquitous in the Aloha State, from shuttered shops along Lahaina's main drag, Front Street, to empty tables at popular restaurants on Kauai's South Shore, to the foreclosure of Honolulu's landmark Ilikai Hotel. (Opened in 1964 as Hawaii's first luxury high-rise, the Ilikai starred — along with actor Jack Lord's artfully tousled pompadour — in the opening sequence of the long-running TV series Hawaii Five-O.)
Hit early by the California subprime mortgage debacle, last spring's back-to-back bankruptcies of Aloha and ATA airlines and the May pullout of the second of three Norwegian Cruise Lines' Hawaii-based ships, the state's tourism industry has been taking it in the boardshorts ever since. Last year, visitor arrivals dropped 10.8% from 2007, to 6.8 million. Spending fell by 9.9%, and statewide hotel occupancy slipped 4.7%, to 70.4%. December was even worse, with hotels emptier than they'd been since just after 9/11.
But for bargain hunters, the economic tsunami is translating to unaccustomed elbow room and a wave of unprecedented discounts in one of the USA's most alluring — and expensive — destinations.
Second largest among the six major Hawaiian Islands, Maui is particularly popular among North American travelers and home to some of the priciest lodgings in the country: The average daily room rate last year was $268.55, second only to New York and up 2.7% from 2007.
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