The final statistics are in and 2024 was a record year for tourism. Not for Hawaiʻi, but for Japan.
Last year, visitors to Japan soared by more than 15% from the previous all-time high. That mark was set in 2019 — the year before the pandemic.
The top visitors to Japan last year were South Koreans, followed by Chinese. The new record total is nearly 37 million visitors who spent more than $50 billion.
But look beyond those numbers for a deeper story and focus on the pace of travel. By last September, visitor arrivals in Japan had already surpassed the total for all of 2023.
It only took 11 months to break the tourism record for a full year. One of the fastest-growing segments of the market is Americans.
A big reason for that is painfully familiar to anyone involved in the business of serving Japanese visitors to Hawaiʻi: it's all about the currency. The dollar's strength, or yen's weakness, has been a factor for so long that it has changed travel habits.
Three years ago, one U.S. dollar would get you about 114 yen. It started to change sharply that year.
Now at about 156 yen, that makes Japan nearly 40% cheaper to visit if you live in the United States. If you live in Japan, Hawaiʻi is about 40% more expensive.
