Alicia Humiston bought her condo in Lahaina after she visited Maui and fell for its rainforests, lava fields and the whales that gather offshore. She travels there about three times a year and rents out her unit for short periods when she’s not in Hawaii.
“Maui was my dream place,” she said in a phone interview from her home in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.
But now Maui’s mayor wants to make it impossible for Humiston and thousands of other condo owners to rent their properties to tourists. Instead, he wants them rented long-term to Maui locals to address a chronic housing shortage that reached a new crisis point after last August’s deadly wildfire burned the homes of 12,000 residents.
The mayor’s proposal faces multiple legislative and bureaucratic hurdles, starting Tuesday with a Maui Planning Commission meeting. Yet it has inflamed an already-heated debate about the future of one of the world’s best-known travel destinations: Will Maui continue to cater to tourists, who power the local economy? Or will it curb tourism to address persistent complaints that visitors are overwhelming the island’s beaches and roads and making housing unaffordable?
Taxes are less of an issue. Airbnbs pay proper taxes, too, both occupancy tax and in some cities a registration fee along with it. I have no idea if they pay less taxes per guest than hotels, but they do collect occupancy tax like hotels. Not sure if they also have all the other local/city taxes that get tacked onto hotel rooms, though. Maybe?
The issue is people are buying houses that could be a home to someone living on the island full time, but those houses are rented to tourists. The islands are small, so it’s not like they can just build a bunch more houses for locals. And even if they did, the demand for tourist housing is higher than the number of rooms available so those new houses would just get rented too. So you can charge all the taxes you want, but it won’t make up for a lack of housing for locals.
What is clear is that hotels are not catering to the desires of traveling families. People usually aren’t renting houses through Airbnb because they are cheaper than hotels. They are renting because they are way more comfortable when you have more than a few people, either a family of 4 or multiple families together. Parents can get their own bedroom to change clothes in, have sex in, whatever without their kids being around. Kids get their own room so the parents don’t have to deal with them. Couples can get separate rooms from other couples when traveling together but still have a shared space to hang out and watch movies/drink together. They can also be cheaper per room if you look at getting multiple hotel rooms for a group of people, but not always. There just aren’t very many hotels with large spaces like that. The ones that do are called presidential suites and cost $4000 per night.
Don’t forget the benefits of having an actual fully equipped kitchen. Eating out every night can get expensive so being able to cook is a nice alternative.
It’s huge. With a large family (or given recent inflation of pricings for eating out a small family) you can stay for an extra day or two with the savings from cooking some meals at your accomodations.
Then it’s time to pressure hotels to start catering to what people want vs states allowing private equity and private out-of-state ownership of housing in Hawaii.
Having access to a holiday domicile will never outweigh the need for year-round housing for residents and Native Hawaiians. Remember almost 50% of Native Hawaiians now live elsewhere, primarily due to the cost of living and lack of available/affordable housing in Hawaii.
I totally agree that housing for locals takes precedence. 30 years ago families were content to just cram into a hotel and deal with that annoyance, or spend a lot of money on vacation rentals found through classified ads. The market has changed, and hotels have not changed to keep up. And local jurisdictions are not pushing hotels to adapt to help out.
This is exactly the appeal of an Airbnb for me. Solo traveling a hotel is adequate, bit with a family having the extra space and kitchen is a game changer. Not to mention the individual charm of staying in a unique spot vs staying on a corporate decorated to the lowest common denominator hotel room.
This is something I consistently see overlooked in these discussions. I don’t dispute that it increases prices for locals and there needs to be some balance, but hotels are not offering anything close to Airbnb’s for a large section of travelers.