The Hawaiian tourism sector saw a downtick in July 2025, with both visitor arrivals and spending taking a hit, as reported by the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism (DBEDT). Arrivals dipped to 873,430 visitors, marking a 4.4% decline from the previous July, and spending dropped by 4.3%, landing at $1.95 billion. Despite these decreases, the figures still showed an 87.8% recovery from pre-pandemic levels seen in July 2019. DBEDT's news release highlights that the spending surpassed the $1.70 billion spent in July 2019 by a substantial 15.0%.
In a breakdown of arrivals by region, the majority flew in from the U.S. West and U.S. East, with air travel bringing in 870,795 of the total visitors. However, the air arrivals saw a drop from July 2024, standing 4.6% lower. Moreover, the cruise ship industry saw a slight boost with two vessels docking in contrast to just one in July 2024. The average length of stay inched up slightly to 8.84 days, marginally longer than 8.83 days in July of the preceding year and just shy of the 8.92 days in July 2019. Statewide daily visitor counts also fell, reaching 249,160, which represents a 4.2% decrease from last year.
Visitors from the U.S. West spent less in July 2025, with expenditures falling to $942.0 million, a dip of 6.8% from July 2024. Nonetheless, the spend was much higher than the $669.8 million seen in July 2019, marking a 40.6% increase. In contrast, visitors from the U.S. East upped their daily spending, pushing their total outputs to $622.2 million, overcoming the previous year by 4.3% and showing a significant surge of 21.8% from July 2019 figures. On the other side of the Pacific, arrivals from Japan saw a decline both in numbers and spending, echoing a downward trend across other international markets too. Notably, visitor numbers from Canada dropped 11.6% from the previous year, yet Canadian tourists spent more daily compared to both 2024 and 2019.
When looking at the bigger 2025 picture, Hawaii welcomed 5,790,537 visitors in the first seven months, registering a slight 1.2% growth over the same period in 2024 but trailing by 6.1% compared to the pre-pandemic figures of 2019. Total visitor spending for the period was up, reaching $12.90 billion, and marking a healthier 4.7% rise over the previous year. However, Maui, which is still to fully recover after the Maui wildfires, saw declines in arrivals but a notable improvement in hotel occupancy rates. DBEDT Director James Kunane Tokioka reflected on this trend, stating, "July 2025 was a soft month for tourism in Hawai‘i," and underscored the positive turn for cruise visitors despite overall sector challenges.
The air travel seats to the islands in July 2025 also shrank. With 5,185 transpacific flights furnishing 1,153,876 seats, there was a clear reduction from the 5,445 flights and 1,202,693 seats in the previous year. This represents a continuation of the trend from 2019, which saw 5,681 flights and 1,254,165 seats. The year-to-date figure for visitor arrivals by July is nearly back to pre-pandemic levels, yet it is evident that the sector is grappling with a complex recovery path.
