Hawaii’s tourism and hospitality market has been slow to recover from the “strong one-two punch” of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and the wildfires that engulfed Maui in 2023, according to Sean Dee, executive vice president and chief commercial officer at Outrigger Hospitality Group.
Despite recent challenges, including seeing international visitation numbers significantly down, Hawaii represents an obvious target for strategic growth for Outrigger because the market is home, said Dee, who also serves as chair of the Hawaii Visitor & Convention Bureau.
Over the last several years, Outrigger has acquired and renovated several beach resorts across the Hawaiian islands, reinvesting hundreds of millions of dollars into the market, Dee told Hotel Dive. With more growth on the horizon, he gave a pulse check on Hawaii’s hospitality industry as Outrigger positions itself as the premier beach resort company.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
HOTEL DIVE: Can you give an update on Hawaii’s tourism landscape?
SEAN DEE: 2019 was a record year for Hawaii in terms of overall visitor arrivals, at about 10.4 million, and then COVID hit, and the world changed for us.
Coming out of COVID, Hawaii had very soft international recovery, and we're still suffering from that. For full-year 2025, visitor arrivals were about 9.7 million, so we're still about 8% to 10% below 2019 levels, if you factor in all arrivals.
U.S. arrivals have actually recovered – there’s more visitors coming to Hawaii from the mainland now than in 2019. That’s a positive trend that has been fueled by a lot of things, but notably that U.S. travelers want to stay in the U.S. Additionally, Southwest Airlines made a major commitment to the market in 2019 and stuck with that through COVID, which brought a lot of new consumers from secondary markets.
One major challenge, though, is that visitation from Japan was only about 50% recovered in 2025 compared to 2019 levels. Meanwhile, visitation from Australia and Canada was also down. The international markets, in aggregate, are still significantly below where they were in 2019. We do believe at some point international visitation will get back to 2019 levels, but it's been stubborn and slow.
Then, in 2023, came the Maui wildfires, which effectively resulted in the destruction of Lahaina, one of the top tourist destinations across all of the islands. This was arguably the most significant wildfire destruction of a city in the history of the U.S., and certainly one of the biggest mass incidents to hit Hawaii, and we continue to see a very, very slow recovery.
With COVID and then the fires, Hawaii got a pretty strong one-two punch. The people of Hawaii, though, are super resilient, and there are plans to rebuild.
How is luxury travel demand, in particular, evolving in Hawaii?
Amid a K-shaped economy, the U.S. hotel industry is seeing growth across the luxury and upper upscale segments. And it’s not just rate growth, which is there obviously, but room night growth has been pretty significant. Where there is softness is in the midscale and limited- and select-service segments. This is absolutely happening in Hawaii as well.
From an Outrigger perspective, over the years, the bulk of our development has been focused on the upper upscale and luxury segments. We made it a point to focus our efforts there. Whether it’s on the acquisition side or the renovation side, that’s our sweet spot.
The investment that not only Outrigger, but the Blackstones and Host Hotels & Resorts of the world, are making – investing in acquisition and renovations that cater to a higher-end consumer that’s a little less price sensitive – I think that’s the smart investment.
What investments or renovations is Outrigger planning in 2026?
About five years ago, we created a five-year plan to validate our positioning as the premier beach resort company in the world. We’ve been focused on what we need to do as a company to own that from an investment perspective, a pipeline perspective, a renovation perspective, and also from a location perspective.
On the renovation front, we’ve focused on our Waikiki assets initially. We’re currently renovating the Outrigger Waikiki Beach Resort. We started that renovation last month, and we should be finished by October of 2026. That’s a major investment – $100 million across all 524 rooms – and we think this is going to be a massive enhancement for our brand. It will represent the fourth renovation that we'll have completed since 2018 in Waikiki.
In addition to that, and tied to our five-year plan, we identified that outside of Waikiki, we had an opportunity to have an Outrigger resort on all four major Hawaiian islands. Since 2022, we have acquired the Outrigger Kauai Beach Resort & Spa, the Outrigger Kona Resort & Spa and the Outrigger Kāʻanapali Beach Resort, and there’s a renovation plan for each one. So, we’ve been very active with expansion in Hawaii. It’s our home market, and obviously makes best strategic sense for us. The renovations will probably result in about $250 million to $300 million reinvested in Hawaii.
