Hawaii

Hawaii's economy on a long road to recovery, economist says

Published

2 years ago

January 3, 2024

Hawaii's economy on a long road to recovery, economist says

(The Center Square) – An aging population, an exodus of residents, and slow recovery in tourism and jobs all contribute to the anticipated contraction of Hawaii’s economy in 2024, an economist told a state Senate panel.

Dr. Eugene Tian, economic research administrator at the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism, shared the viewport at the Senate Ways and Means Committee.

According to Tian’s department, there were 10.4 million visitors to Hawaii, spending an estimated $17.7 billion before the pandemic. That figure will reach 9.8 million visitors in 2024, up 0.2% from 2023 to 10.1 million in 2025, according to the forecast.

Tourism is Hawaii’s primary income source, impacting service industries from transportation to retail trade.

“The visitors in 2019, we had 10.4 million, by 2025 our forecast is 10.1, so we will not recover until after 2026 according to our estimates,” Tian said.

Hawaiians would like to see tourism spending grow but not an increase in tourism.

“The sentiment in the population here is they don’t want to see tourism growing above the ten million mark that we used to have,” Sen. Donna Kim said. ”It seems like we’re saying tourism is not growing therefore the economy is not going to grow and we want tourism to grow.”

Tian said most of the visitor spending increases seen in 2023 were due to inflation and an increase in the transient accommodations tax at 3% across services, which was included in the visitors’ spending figures.

“The cost of lodging and food away from home in Honolulu has skyrocketed,” the report said. “Room rates have surged by 31%, and dining out in Honolulu is now 28% more expensive than in 2019. These increases in local tourism costs affect all visitors, and they have pushed up U.S. visitor spending.”

Jobs also grew slowly in the past few years, according to Tian.

“You can see the jobs in 2019 were about 660,000 jobs, but by 2025 we will not recover,” he said. “So the jobs and the visitors, they are consistent that recovery will be 2026 or beyond.”

Non-agricultural jobs, which employed just over 658,000 workers in 2019, fell during the pandemic years but have slowly been increasing. They are forecast to reach approximately 641,000 in 2024 and 652,000 in 2025.

“In terms of jobs, we are still losing about 30,000 jobs compared with 2019,” Tian said.

The Hawaii County or “Big Island” job market has almost recovered to 99.6%.

The Maui fires impacted gross domestic production, but as of the third quarter of 2023, Hawaii recovered 97.7% of the same period of 2019.

“We are still recovering while the U.S. has been fully recovered since 2021,” Tian said “So we are lacking the full recovery from the economy, in terms of GDP (it) will be about 2026.”

Tian said it takes about six years for the economy to recover, and the same is true for Hawaii.

“One of the industries we are doing well is actually construction,” Tian said. “This is one of the bright spots.”

The bulk of the increase in construction is a result of federal spending projects like ”the $4 billion for work at Pearl Harbor” for naval shipyard renovations. Local codes still delay permits for building residential houses for up to eight years, he said.

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Hawaii

What’s Cooking: Celebrating Lunar New Year with Hawaii Dim Sum & Seafood

Published

4 hours ago

January 10, 2026

Press Room

What’s Cooking: Celebrating Lunar New Year with Hawaii Dim Sum & Seafood

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – A family-run Chinese restaurant in Honolulu’s Chinatown is gearing up for Lunar New Year festivities.

Hawaii Dim Sum & Seafood Restaurant owner Karen Tam and her son Kirave Liang joined HNN’s Sunrise to showcase their dim sum and Chinese specialties.

Lunar New Year specials include a special jai with 18 vegetarian ingredients and the sweet, sticky, steamed rice cake gau in brown sugar and coconut flavors, which symbolize good fortune and prosperity.

”We eat food with a lucky meaning to start the great year,” Tam said. “We have jin dui (sesame balls) every day.“

Feb. 17 marks the start of the year of the Fire Horse, when families gather to celebrate with big meals and auspicious dishes. Hawaii Dim Sum & Seafood will offer set party menus and special orders for foods not commonly found in Honolulu, such as whole stuffed duck, braised abalone in oyster sauce, and basin meal.

“It’s the biggest fest of the year. We celebrate Chinese New Year by eating with family in a round table,“ Tam said.

Hawaii Dim Sum & Seafood also has private rooms with karaoke systems and a banquet hall to accommodate small family gatherings to large parties.

Hawaii Dim Sum & Seafood is located on 111 N. King St. and is open from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily, There is street parking and paid parking behind the restaurant on Nimitz and Maunakea.

For more information, visit hawaiidimsumseafood.com or follow on Instagram @hawaiidimsumseafood.

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Hawaii

Hawaii suffers first defeat of the season against Loyola Chicago | Honolulu Star-Advertiser

Published

16 hours ago

January 10, 2026

Press Room

Hawaii suffers first defeat of the season against Loyola Chicago | Honolulu Star-Advertiser

The second-ranked Hawaii men’s volleyball team expected a different Loyola Chicago team to show up Friday night in the rematch of Thursday’s 94-minute sweep by UH.

They were certainly correct in that assessment.

Hawaii coach Charlie Wade said flatly the Ramblers were better after No. 7 Loyola Chicago handed Hawaii its first home loss in January in two years in a 25-23, 25-22, 24-26, 29-27 win before a season-high crowd of 5,811 at Bankoh Arena at Stan Sheriff Center.

Aleksandar Sosa put down a match-high 19 kills and setter Ryan McElligott set the tone with four of his five aces in the first set for Loyola Chicago (1-1), which out-served and out-blocked the Rainbow Warriors.

“I thought they touched a lot of balls on the block and those first two sets, the first set, we had three or four balls back on our side to score some points and we didn’t,” Wade said. “We kind of screwed it up. We weren’t quite as crisp and efficient and against a good team, we let them hang around and they come back and make some plays late.”

Hawaii looked done for the night trailing 20-13 when it mounted a furious comeback in the third set to avoid a sweep.

Loyola Chicago had five match points in the fourth set and finally put the contest away with a double block of Ofeck Hazan to complete the upset.

“I think they served way better and we really struggled passing their serve,” said Hazan, who started in place of Trevell Jordan in the middle. “They were more creative out of system. (Thursday) they just hit into our block and today they just found the touches or just played better.”

Louis Sakanoko led Hawaii with 18 kills and set a career high with 12 digs, and Kristian Titriyski added 16 kills before sitting out the fourth set. UH hit .254 for the match and had six aces to the Ramblers’ eight. Loyola Chicago hd 15.5 blocks to Hawaii’s 10.5.

“We weren’t clicking on all cylinders and I’m not trying to use this as an excuse, but (setter) Tread (Rosenthal) didn’t practice all week. He had a back that tightened up,” Wade said. “Trevell’s back tightened up and I thought Ofeck played pretty well and he gave us a nice spark, but you’re just a little off rhythm there. Kristian was kind of grabbing his back late and obviously we made the decision to go with Kainoa (Wade) to give us a spark and he gave us that.”

Kainoa Wade and Sakanoko each served three straight points for UH in the third set after it fell behind 20-13 and Finn Kearney came off the bench to serve the final two points that ended in blocks to get UH back in the game.

Hawaii hit just .171 in the fourth and made eight service errors. It had 20 serving errors for the match and served in at less than 80%.

“Obviously it’s a work in progress. We’re in game four of the year,” Kainoa Wade said. “We got a lot of work to do, but we’ve got to trust what we know. We’ve served a lot of balls in our lives, all of us, so we know we can go on runs and make plays.”

The Ramblers gave Hawaii a taste of its own medicine in the opening set with McElligott building a strong poker hand of aces during an 8-0 run during which Charlie Wade used both timeouts.

McElligott had three aces after Jake Read’s kill put him behind the service line, and despite two Hawaii timeouts and the media timeout, he poured it on until UH caught a break with a Loyola Chicago net violation on an overpass that almost certainly would have been a Ramblers point.

Sakanoko followed with back-to-back kills, including a deep tip into the far corner over a triple block that prompted Loyola Chicago to call timeout leading 17-14.

Hawaii extended the run to 5-0 after Titriyski put down a kill following a long rally to pull UH within a point.

The Rainbow Warriors got back to even at 22-all on Kainoa Wade’s ace as a serving sub. The set was tied once more until a Rosenthal service error and a McElligott ace for his fourth of the set handed UH its first set loss of the season.

Rosenthal wasn’t able to spin serve all night due to the back injury.

Neither team separated by more than a point in the second set until Justin Todd had two aces during a 4-0 UH run to put the ‘Bows ahead 13-10.

Hawaii led 21-19 when the Ramblers scored six of the next seven points to go up two sets to none.

UH’s only point during the final 6-1 run came on a Loyola Chicago service error. The Ramblers scored three of their points on errors by UH and another on their sixth ace of the match.

The Rainbow Warriors will have four days off before playing four matches in three days next week.

Hawaii has doubleheaders against Roberts Wesleyan and Rockhurst in reverse order on Wednesday and Friday.

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Hawaii

2026 Sony Open field is announced. See who’s playing in Hawaii

Published

1 day ago

January 9, 2026

Press Room

2026 Sony Open field is announced. See who’s playing in Hawaii

The Sony Open in Hawaii has the honors of being the kickoff event to the 2026 PGA Tour season after the cancellation of The Sentry at Kapalua this season.

Instead of Maui, the Tour debuts in Honolulu on the island of Oahu, Jan. 15-18, at the Seth Raynor-designed Waialae Country Club, where Nick Taylor prevailed in a playoff over Nico Echavarria last year.

Among the changes this season is the field size, which was reduced from 144 to 120, and, there is no longer is a Monday qualifier offering four spots. Will that help with pace of play? Stay tuned.

The field includes the following notables in addition to Taylor and Echavarria: Daniel Berger, Keegan Bradley, Michael Brennan, Corey Conners, Tony Finau, Chris Gotterup, Brian Harman, Russell Henley, Billy Horschel, Robert MacIntyre, Collin Morikawa, Adam Scott, Jordan Spieth, Sahith Theegala, Gary Woodland and 62-year-old Vijay Singh.

Here’s the full field for the Sony Open, which will be live on Golf Channel all four days as well as NBC with early-round coverage on Saturday and Sunday.

This year’s Sony purse is $9.1 million and the winner also will receive 500 FedEx Cup points.

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