California Sent Maui Most U.S. Visitors in 2010

File photo.

By Sonia Isotov

The Hawaii Tourism Authority released 2010 preliminary visitor arrivals by United States region data this week showing that California leads the nation in Maui visitor arrivals.

California leads the nation in U.S. visitor arrival for 2010 with 519,981 visitor arrivals, followed in order by the following top 5 states; Washington, 154,009; Oregon, 79,443; Illinois, 49,976; Arizona, 48,160; and Colorado, 44,968.

The Pacific Region comprised of California, Washington, Oregon, and Alaska was by far the largest source of visitor arrivals for Maui. The Pacific Region sent 770,343 visitors to Maui in 2010. The Mountain Region came close with 169,224 visitor arrivals, followed by East North Central Region 126,243; South Atlantic Region 100,582; W. South Central Region, 97,277; Mid Atlantic Region, 90,715; W. North Central Region, 66,626; New England Region, 35,157; and East South Central, 25,754.

The Pacific Region, and in particular Oregon, saw the largest percentage increase in visitor arrivals year-over-year for all regions and states; with visitor arrivals from Oregon increasing 20.9%  and the visitor arrivals from the Pacific Region increasing 13.1% .

W. North Central Region and the Mountain Region showed the smallest increase at 2.2% for the same time period.

Alaska showed the largest percentage decrease for a state in visitor arrivals to Maui at 15.3% year-over-year.

For more information, visit the HTA Tourism Research website.