Outrigger Resorts & Hotels has steadily expanded its presence in its home state of Hawaii, opening both the Outrigger Kaanapali Beach Resort on Maui and the Outrigger Kauai Beach Resort & Spa last year. In recent years, the company has also gained a foothold in the Asia-Pacific market, where it now has seven locations in Fiji, Thailand, Mauritius and the Maldives.
Christina Jelski, hotel editor for Travel Weekly, heard from Jeff Wagoner, CEO of Outrigger Resorts & Hotels, for the latest on the company’s performance and overall tourism outlook.
Travel Weekly (TW): How has Maui’s tourism and hospitality sector dealt with the aftermath of the wildfires?
Jeff Waggoner: All of the residents who were displaced from their homes and living in hotels and condos have been relocated to more permanent housing, which is fantastic. Hotels are back in traditional business and business is starting to grow pretty quickly in West Maui. We are very pleased with the occupancy rate right now and it is getting better every month. We purchased the Outrigger Kaanapali Beach Resort two weeks before the wildfires, so as you can imagine we are still building out that property; but it is evolving very similarly to the other hotels in that market. We are in the planning stages for the future of that hotel and will be announcing that shortly.
TW: How has the broader Hawaiian market evolved?
Wagoner: If you look at the Oahu, Honolulu and Waikiki markets, performance was very strong. Our properties significantly exceeded last year’s levels, which is great to see. The Kauai market and Big Island continue to perform very well. The one area where we saw the biggest decline is Maui. There was a slight decline on Kauai and the Big Island right after the wildfires, but once consumers understood that the impact on Maui was limited, the other markets rebounded.
TW: Is Hawaii benefiting from the strong trend towards group travel?
Wagoner:: Group travel isn’t usually a big market share in Honolulu, but the convention center there just had the best year in its history. Our Kona and Kauai properties have the largest meeting space of any of our properties worldwide, so we’re very focused on bringing group travel back to those markets. We’re seeing a nice return of tour travel, and a lot of it is coming from overseas. We’ve seen some groups from Australia, some from Canada, and also from Japan.
TW: Speaking of Japan: Are you seeing demand picking up again in this market?
Wagoner:: This year it’s significantly higher than last year. We’re somewhere between 50% and 60% of 2019 numbers for travel from Japan. The currency continues to fluctuate, but recently it’s been better than it was a few months ago. And I think narrowing the currency gap will help quite a bit.
TW: What trends do you see across Outrigger’s Asia Pacific portfolio?
Wagoner: Fiji has performed spectacularly. Since Australia opened its borders to travelers from outside Australia, these properties have performed very well, running over 90% occupancy each month. All three of our properties in Thailand have performed very well, exceeding our expectations. China used to be the biggest source market for Thailand, and that is starting to pick up. There is a lot of new inventory in the Maldives. We are doing well there, but not quite as strongly as some other areas. Still, properties in the Maldives are running 75% to 85% occupancy and the average rate remains strong. But we have seen Fiji and Thailand do significantly better than we expected.
