A state economist explained to BYU–Hawaii students in the School of Business Entrepreneurship lecture on November 9 that he uses all kinds of numbers to measure Hawaii's most important industry, tourism.
"We are the numbers agency in the state government," said Dr. Eugene Tian, the chief statistician in the Research and Economic Analysis Division of the Hawaii State Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism. He indicated he does "all kinds of numbers, including the Hawaii State Data Book.
Focusing a little closer to BYU–Hawaii, Tian used graphs to show the quantitative trends at the Polynesian Cultural Center next door. "For the last 20 years, you can see that the visitor count has been slightly decreasing. One reason I've found might be due to the composition of tourism."
Tian explained, "Years ago, about 50 percent of the visitors to Hawaii were repeating, but now they're between 60 percent to 70 percent. Repeating visitors tend to go to other attractions before coming back here."
Another stat he displayed showed the increasing enrollment at BYU–Hawaii. "You are the third largest undergraduate program in the state. For this business climate, for this community, which has nearly 6,000 people, think how important you are. You are a major economic contributor to this area."
Taking a broader view, Tian explained that "Hawaii's economy is very simple. For the last 200 years, we have focused on only a few major economic activities," noting these have included sandalwood, whaling, sugar, pineapple, the military, and of course, tourism.
"Since 1960, we've been developing tourism. It was growing at a very fast rate in the 1970s and 80s until we reached about seven million visitors a year, but since 1991 our visitor count has been in stagnation. We actually never reached seven million. In 2000 we almost reached there, and we were preparing for the seventh millionth visitor ... but we didn't reach it."
Tian said current stats show that international visitors have dropped off, while domestic visitors are still increasing. "The gap until the early 1990s was getting smaller, but now it's increasing," he added, pointing out that the industry has been seriously impacted by external conditions such as the Asian financial crisis in the 1990s, wars and 9/11 in 2001: "All of these things impact tourism."
Getting back to the numbers, Tian explained economists measure tourism by visitor counts, number of rooms, and expenditures. "We have divided visitors into nine markets, who spend about 60 million visitor-days a year here. The majority of the visitors are actually from the U.S. west (42.3 percent). Other areas include the U.S. east (28.7 percent), Japan (13.4 percent), Canada (4.7 percent) and Europe, Oceania, other Asia, Latin America, and others; 81.5 percent come for pleasure, 11.2 percent for business, and 8.7 percent are visiting family and relatives."
He also said the number of current visitors as a percent of Hawaii's de facto population of approximately 1.2 million on a typical day is about 12 percent. They use about 70,000 visitor units. "One thing interesting is that timeshares are increasing, especially on Kauai," he added, noting the Garden island has almost 1,700 such units, compared with about 1,000 units on Oahu and 1,500 on Maui.
"To an economist, however, the main thing is not how many people come here, but how much they spend," Tian continued, explaining that Hawaii tourism is roughly a $10 billion annual industry.
"Out of the $10 billion average expenditures, the U.S. west is still the largest group: 60 percent of all visitors are from the United States. Japanese visitors used to be about 38 percent, now they're only 22 percent," he said, but adding that the "Japanese spend on average $240 a day, compared with the Canadians, who spend [an average] $121.50 a day."
Tian stressed that tourism numbers also include Hawaii residents. "We have about one million traveling each year — a lot of people — and that includes local people going to the neighbor islands."
Tian suggested some of the economics students might want to do their own statistical research. For example, mentioning he recently read about a study on the University of Hawaii's impact on the state economy, he asked the students, "What about BYU–Hawaii? It may be a good idea to study BYU–Hawaii's contribution to Hawaii's economy. Another study could be what kinds of visitors come to the Polynesian Cultural Center, and why they come."