May's spending increase helped boost total expenditures for the first five months of 2010 to $4.3 billion; however, year-to-date visitor spending has underperformed HTA's target by 11.1 percent. If it continues at its current pace, visitor spending will only attain $11.4 billion of the HTA's $11.8 billion year-end spending target.

That's bad news for a market that ultimately gauges growth by spending, the true measure of a destination's performance. Hawaii's visitor industry was forced to focus on putting heads on beds after the collapse of Lehman Bros., the global recession and the heyday of H1N1 took their toll on the arrivals.