Beat of Hawaii article: Maui Visitors are saying they are not coming back

[rickandcindy23]

Maui Visitors Are Quietly Saying It: "We’re Not Coming Back"

It’s not that Maui has suddenly become unappealing. It’s that trust is fragile. And right now, a lot of visitors don’t feel like they can count on the island to meet them halfway.

beatofhawaii.com

I suspect this is an article written by a person who owns a VRBO/ Airbnb rental property.

The only people who were interviewed were older than me. These two couples said specifically that Maui is trying to get them to stay in hotels and not in their usual places.

 

[Luanne]

I read that article. Maybe I'm oblivious but I've never felt unwelcome or unwanted when visiting Maui. I know there are people that aren't returning due to cost. There is a man from Canada who I used to see every year when we would visit. We'd be at the same place for coffee each morning. He and his wife used to come for 3 or 4 weeks every year and stay in Kihei at the same place. He told me a couple of years ago that due to costs and the horrible exchange rate they were cutting back to two weeks. This year I didn't see him at all.

 

[rickandcindy23]

We always feel aloha when we come to Maui. This is purely about the new law against VRBO/ Airbnb rentals. This will not be the only article about it, I guarantee that.

Maui is going to lose a certain amount of visitors, that's for sure, and the loss of taxes as a result of that. When some friends of friends took their home out of the rental pool on Maui, they saved an enormous amount of property taxes as well. Their property was taxed at a higher rate as a rental property + received taxes on a per-night basis, and was run by a management company.

Loss of income for the county with much-reduced property taxes. I think it was 5X more as a rental property.
Loss of income for the county in nightly taxes.
Loss of income for the real estate management company.
Loss of income for the housekeepers who work in that industry.

Maui is not thinking of the losses, and this couple kept their property and will stay in it for half the year, going back and forth to Colorado to ski at home.

 

[ScoopKona]

Tourism in Hawaii used to be self limiting. During the golden age of jet travel, a round-trip ticket from the West Coast, coach, on a DC-9 cost $4,000 adjusted for inflation.

Maui has always and will continue to be "tip of the spear" trying to find a way to dial back visitor numbers. They get a quarter of the total visitors to the state but only make up a little more than 10% of the land area. They feel the effects of mass tourism far more. They've tried to limit flights in. Charge usage taxes. And currently they're attacking the problem using zoning. They'll keep at it until they find the secret sauce which throttles visitor numbers.

A lot of Aunties and Unkos are nostalgic for the 1960s, when it was a trickle of visitors who spent a lot of money. And hospitality was considered a solid lifetime career. And Hawaii was still very much an agricultural-export economy.