Hawaii eyes Chinese, S. Korean tourists

Hawaii tourism officials are looking to the Chinese mainland and South Korea to help offset continuing declines in the number of visitors from Japan, the state's largest source of foreign tourists.

The interest in those markets comes at a time when the overall number of tourists to Hawaii is also declining. Nearly 7.4 million visitors came to the islands last year, a drop of 1.2 percent from 2006.

Despite some good news in January when arrivals increased over the same month last year, the number of visitors in 2008 is expected to decline by 1.4 percent.