The Hawaii Tourism Authority reports that visitor spending in October rose by 12.7 percent compared to the previous year to $1.1 billion, but there’s a catch. Excerpt from a statement put out by HTA: 

Though still strong growth, the pace was slightly slower than the first nine months of 2012 (+19.5%). Higher daily spending and an 8.6 percent growth in total arrivals (to 640,666 visitors) contributed to the increase in October 2012.

Still, HTA president & CEO Mike McCartney says he’s “optimistic that this positive momentum will continue through the rest of the year, and will lead us to exceed our aggressive 2012 targets of 7.89 million total visitor arrivals and $13.9 billion in total expenditures.”