Japanese tourism to Hawaiʻi remains at less than half the level it was before the COVID pandemic. Now tourism officials and industry leaders are shifting their strategy to attract this once high-spending market.
Japanese visitors to Hawaiʻi are shifting their travel habits. Once they focused on consumption. They'd travel to the islands just to shop, especially when their currency was strong.
Shinishiro Shimizu is vice chair of Japan Airlines. He told the Hawaii-Japan Summit last week that now visitors from Japan are more purpose-driven.
They’re focused on spending less money — and more time — taking in the sights.
One of the big reasons is the depreciating yen. That prevents visitors from Japan from spending as much as they once did.
Spending by Japanese visitors peaked more than 20 years ago at $446 per day.
But since 2016, that spending has fallen at a compound annual rate of nearly 3%. Over the same period, visitors from the East and West Coasts posted annual spending increases.
It’s not just the weak yen — the country's ultra-low interest rates have also limited the yen's strength against the dollar.
Fourteen years ago, a U.S. dollar was worth about 80 yen, but today that exchange is about 150 yen to a dollar.
High prices fueled by inflation, high wages, and the conflict in Iran are also discouraging consumers from Japan from spending in the Hawaiian Islands.
Shimizu says it might be misleading to compare today’s numbers to the era before COVID-19. That's because Japanese consumers' attitudes toward travel and how they want to spend time have shifted.
But he says the people in Japan who have the resources to travel are still coming to Hawaiʻi. He says if you talk to anyone from Japan Air Lines or Hawaiian Airlines, the front of the plane, where you find first class, is still pretty full.
