Spewing volcano in Hawaii deters visitors, save the Japanese

Following ongoing eruptions in recent weeks at Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano, ForwardKeys reported a slump in travel bookings from most of Hawaii’s top feeder markets in the month of May – with the exception of Japan, which bucked the trend with bookings up 10.6 per cent.

After the eruption on May 3, bookings for the period May 3-31 period slumped by 9.8%, with Canada down 23.2%, Australia down 32.2%, China down 39.8%, Germany down 47.7% and New Zealand down 27.5%.

With Japan the one source market to buck this trend, ForwardKeys CEO 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.”

While bookings in May suffered, over the coming five-month period to the end of October, forward bookings are still 2.2 per cent ahead of where they were at this time last year.

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