Occupancy

Aloha Kakou:

Monday's "on-book" report tells us what we can expect in the way of occupancy for the current month. It also tells us how much occupancy we have "on the books" for each of the next two months.

As I have mentioned in the monthly newsletter, occupancy for the entire island is down this summer. All Maui hotel properties are struggling with lower occupancies for 2008. There are just fewer tourists visiting this year, for the reasons that have been enumerated previously: two airlines leaving the market; higher oil (and jet fuel) prices; economic uncertainty amongst the demographic that represents our guests; and a general trend for potential guests to "stay-cation" or to vacation much closer to home.

This Monday's on-book report show that we will end August about 25% lower than where I would like us to be. Also, going into fall, it looks as though our occupancies will be about 30% lower than last year for the months of September and October.

We are still showing sold out at Christmas. Most of those guests book while they are here for the next year. We will begin to contact those guests to reconfirm. Bookings for the first quarter of next year are close to where they were for '08 at this time in '07, but they are lagging slightly, nonetheless.