The impact of the eruption of the Kilauea volcano on tourism to Hawaii last month has been detailed in new figures.
ForwardKeys which predicts future travel patterns by analysing 17 million booking transactions a day, reported a bookings slump of almost 10% in the wake of the volcanic eruption on May 3
Bookings for the period to May 31 from Canada fell by 23.2%, 32.2% from Australia, 39.8% from China, 47.7% from Germany and 27.5% from New Zealand.
The one source market to buck this trend was Japan, where bookings rose by 10.6%.
Total international flight bookings to Hawaii, excluding the US, were up 5.4% in the first four months of the year over the same period in 2017.
Four of its five most important origin markets to the Pacific islands booked strongly.
Japan was up 4.5%, Australia 12.6%, China 12%, Germany 29.3% and New Zealand 16%. Only Canada was down, by 1.4%.
Forward bookings for the next five months are 2.2% ahead of where they were at this time last year, despite last month’s decline.
ForwardKeys chief executive and co-founder Olivier Jager said: “Normally, the Japanese market is super-sensitive to crisis situations and it is the first to cancel when any form of trouble occurs in a destination.
“Our hypothesis is that because Japan sits on the ‘Pacific Ring of Fire’ and has over a hundred active volcanoes, it is so used to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that they cease to be newsworthy; indeed, the situation in Hawaii has featured less in the news in Japan than it has elsewhere.
“An analysis of online news clips of the Kilauea eruption revealed that media exposure in Japan was just 0.2% of total exposure worldwide.”
He added: “Given the magnitude of media coverage, forward bookings to Hawaii are holding up surprisingly well. We are also aware that the vast majority of Japanese and other international visitors to Hawaii stay in Honolulu, which is on a different island from the one where Kilauea is erupting.
“Therefore, we believe that the messages from the governor and the Hawaii Tourism Authority that the volcano is in a remote location, over 100 miles from the main tourist resort areas, and that the islands are open for business, have credibility and are, to a significant extent, being heeded.”