The visitor count was down in February, according to the Catalina Island Chamber of Commerce.
This continues the trend that began in January.
The visitor count for February was down 6.1 percent from February 2012.
But the news wasn’t all bad.
The cruise ship passenger count was up 1 percent from the same time last year.
The term “percent” can be misleading if the actual numbers are taken out of context or not even mentioned.
The visitor count was down in February, according to the Catalina Island Chamber of Commerce.
This continues the trend that began in January.
The visitor count for February was down 6.1 percent from February 2012.
But the news wasn’t all bad.
The cruise ship passenger count was up 1 percent from the same time last year.
The term “percent” can be misleading if the actual numbers are taken out of context or not even mentioned.
If, for example, a single car were stolen in a given city in one year and 3 cars were stolen the next year, that would be a 200 percent increase: a percentage that would sound far worse than the factual reality.
One hundred more cruise ship passengers visited Catalina in February 2013 than in February 2012: but those 100 human beings only appeared as 1 percent in the visitor statistics.
In February 2013, there were 36,563 visitors to Catalina Island. There were 38,214 visitors to Catalina in February 2012.
The overall year-to-date visitor count was also down from this time last year, by 5.8 percent. Again, the cruise ship visitor count has been up slightly: 0.9 percent so far this year compared with the same time last year.
Taking a long term look at the figures, the visitor February count over a three year period averaged 13.8 percent higher for cross-channel traffic, 17.4 percent higher for a five-year average and 6.8 percent higher for a 10-year average.
The February cruise ship visitor count was 19.4 percent lower for a three-year average, 29.1 percent lower for a five-year average and 35.6 percent lower for a 10-year average. Unfortunately, the visitor count was also down in January, by 5.4 percent. At the time, the weather was the prime suspect.
At the time, Donna Harris, Chamber director of marketing, said the January 2013 count was 1,225 visitors short of January 2012’s count.
“Usually, when the sun shines, the phones ring,” Harris said. She said one or two boats to the Island had to be canceled in January. Harris did not believe there were any cross channel cancellations in 2012.
Rough seas led to the cancellation of the Catalina Express crossing in mid-February of this year, which would have played a small roll in this month’s visitor count drop.
