Friday, January 2, 2009 | Modified: Monday, January 5, 2009, 12:00am
Vacationers stay home but military visitors keep coming to Hawaii
Pacific Business News (Honolulu) – by Chad Blair Pacific Business News
Joseph Yip, a U.S. Army warrant officer, checked into the Hale Koa Hotel on Monday, two days before New Year’s Eve.
He was not here for rest and recuperation.
A marine deck officer who captains large, ocean-going landing craft, Yip was in Hawaii on his third temporary duty assignment – known as TDY – in three years.
“With my specific job, we bounce in between Virginia and Hawaii a lot,” said Yip, who is stationed at Fort Eustis, Va., home of the Army’s Transportation Corps. “We do deployment to Korea, Japan, Guam, the Philippines, the Mediterranean – even South America. I think I may be going to Kuwait in July. You never know until you are in the air.”
Yip is representative of one of the very few Hawaii visitor market segments that grew in 2008, and one that has the potential to grow further.
While the number of people who traveled to the Islands last year to get married or honeymoon, to attend a convention or corporate meeting, to visit friends and relatives or to go to school, all declined – some by double digits – those coming for government or military work jumped 16 percent through November, compared to the same period in 2007.
That meant an increase of more than 13,000 visitors, bumping the total number of airline passengers checking off the “government or military business” box on state agriculture forms to about 100,000.
The increase last year reverses a 10.7 percent decline in 2007.
There are several reasons cited by military and government officials, some factual and some anecdotal.
Leading the list is the Rim of the Pacific exercises that brought 20 U.S. Navy ships, 13 foreign ships, two Coast Guard vessels, three U.S. submarines, three foreign submarines, more than 150 U.S. and foreign aircraft, 18 other U.S. Navy and Marine Corps units and 11 foreign units to Oahu from late June through July.
“RIMPAC is held during even-numbered years and the number of military personnel participating can fluctuate between 20,000 and 30,000 – a ton of people,” said Jon Yoshishige, spokesman for the U.S. Pacific Fleet. “What’s not counted are the friends and families who meet the ships and aircraft here and make a little vacation. It helps that the exercises are usually held around the Fourth of July weekend or Memorial Day.”
Unlike most military personnel, those friends and family usually fly commercial and stay in hotels.
At the military-owned Hale Koa, where guests are usually an equal number of active and retired military, official government business was steady in 2008, compared to a slight decrease in leisure travel.
“You certainly had an uptick with RIMPAC, and that may be the reason why you saw more of these visitors,” said Jeff Breslau, a spokesman for the U.S. Pacific Command. “But I am not sure if it was an anomaly or a trend.”
Still, the last time RIMPAC was held, in 2006, the number of military-government travelers to Hawaii totaled only about 93,000 – a 20.3 percent drop compared to the 117,479 who came in 2005.
It’s difficult to define exactly how government-military travel breaks down.
The U.S. Pacific Command, known as PACOM, employs 759 at its Camp Smith headquarters and tracks travel that pertains to its operations. But it does not track visits to Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine bases on Oahu “though we are aware of the more senior-level visits that they have,” said Breslau.
Some details are clear, however.
Most of the travelers – about 83,000 – were from the U.S., more than two-thirds traveled from the East Coast, and 92 percent had business on Oahu.
“In general, the government-military visitor is an independent traveler, most are travelling alone, and at least three-quarters have been to Hawaii before,” said Daniel Nahoopii, tourism research branch chief for Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism.
Their average age is 43, they mainly stay in hotels and they stay in Hawaii for 12.5 days, according to state data.
Similar details on international government-military business travelers are not available. But those arrival numbers were up nearly 50 percent, through November, to more than 16,000.
More than 700 of them came from Canada, marking a 150 percent increase from the number who came in 2007.
(Canadian travel in general is one of the only other bright spots in Hawaii tourism, with arrivals up 5.9 percent to 300,284 last year.)
“It may be anecdotal, but the number of government officials that I personally met with was double from 2007,” said Marsha Wienert, the state’s tourism liaison. “A lot of them were from China, Korea, Malaysia and other Asian countries that are just developing their tourism product and are looking to Hawaii as a model.”
Another possible reason for 2008 being a banner year for government-military travel is due to the Army’s decision last April to permanently base a Stryker brigade at Schofield Barracks on Oahu and to train the unit at Pohakuloa Training Area on the Big Island.
The decision, opposed by some local cultural, environmental and anti-military groups, allowed for the resumption of $250 million worth of construction projects required to help the 25th Infantry Division serve as a primary U.S. rapid-response unit in the Pacific.
The Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii, along with Hawaii’s congressional delegation – particularly Sen. Daniel Inouye, a pork-barrel Democrat who now chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee – was a major proponent of securing the brigade.
The reason has to do more with business than patriotism.
The Department of Defense spends about $8 billion a year in Hawaii with roughly 59,000 members of the armed forces stationed here. With them are about 50,000 family members.
More than 17,000 civilians work for the defense department in Hawaii and there are at least another 50,000 whose jobs are related to the defense industry and military contracting.
While a new presidential administration is expected to take a hard look at military expenditures, for now Hawaii is holding up well: A report released last month by DBEDT said military construction spending in fiscal year 2009 will total $565 million, up $33 million from fiscal 2008.
One other reason for increased “gov’t-mil” travel is a steady stream of meetings held in the Islands, including the sixth-annual Asia-Pacific Homeland Security Summit and Exposition, held at the Sheraton Waikiki in October.
“We took a little bit of flak from some press inside the beltway, how the conference is a boondoggle,” said Lt. Col. Chuck Anthony, a pubic affairs officer for the Hawaii National Guard. “But that is nonsense. This is absolutely important work being done, important information sharing and networking going on here. Hawaii is not just a place where people sit on the beach and do nothing else.”
Warrant Officer Yip won’t be spending much time on the beach.
“With my job, there will be definitely be more TDY,” said Yip, who was stationed at Pearl Harbor’s Ford Island from 2003 to 2006 as an enlisted navigator. “We’ve probably got more soldiers coming and going then any other Army unit. It is by far the best job in the Army, and I am proud of it.”
Military spending to decline
After nearly a decade of growth, military spending in Hawaii is expected to decline over the next two years, according to a report released Wednesday by the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism.
The report, “Profile of Hawaii-based Armed Forces,” showed a decrease in expenditures from $9.3 billion in 2008 to $9 billion in 2009 and $8.4 billion in 2010, according to figures provided by the U.S. Department of Defense.
Federal and military spending will still be a bright spot in Hawaii’s economy in 2009, however, according to a DBEDT economic forecast released in November.
The decline in direct expenditures from the DOD is projected to continue through the next five years, but will be less severe at around 1 percent each year to a low of $8.1 billion in 2013.
DBEDT estimated there were 58,756 total armed forces personnel in Hawaii in 2007, up from 58,194 in 2006. Figures for 2008 were not available.
cblair@bizjournals.com | 955-8036
Source: http://pacific.bizjournals.com/pacific/stories/2009/01/05/story2.html