Tourism can be a valuable source of income for countries, regions and cities, but a high influx of visitors can cause problems with energy supply, infrastructure and general cost of living for the native inhabitants of said areas. Hawaii, for example, is one of the most popular tourist destinations for travelers from the United States and Japan and many of its inhabitants have long been critical of the islands' booming tourism industry. According to data from the Hawaii Tourism Authority and the U.S. Census Bureau, the annual number of tourists from the U.S. alone is five times higher than the population of the tiny island group.
As our chart illustrates, the number of U.S. travelers visiting islands like Hawai'i, O'ahu or Maui has been rising continuously since 2014, crossing the 7-million mark for the first time in 2022. Even in the first year of the coronavirus pandemic, roughly two million U.S. Americans flocked to the island state, which was annexed by the United States in 1898 against staunch resistance by the native population.
Hawaii has also been a popular holiday destination for the Japanese for decades, even though tourist influx from the country is only slowly picking up steam again since 2020. The relationship between Hawaii and Japan is a fraught one though: On December 7, 1941, Japan's air force attacked Pearl Harbor on O'ahu, effectively prompting U.S. involvement in World War II.
In 2019, the overall number of visitors to Hawaii stood above the 10-million threshold, a development cut short by Covid-19. Between January and June 2023, around five million people visited the islands for an average duration of nine nights, spending $10.7 billion in the process. Roughly $8.5 billion of the total amount was spent by the 3.9 million visitors from the United States.
