The Maui County Council considered a tourism reform plan Wednesday that includes a limit on vacation rentals.

What You Need To Know

  • Maui county council members are considering a tourism management plan that would cap visitor units

  • It also includes a range of proposals, including banning vacation rentals in certain neighborhoods and regulating peer-to-peer car rentals

  • Supporters of the proposal to limit vacation rentals said it is getting harder to afford to live on Maui

  • Those who had concerns about the proposal said it might impact the local economy

During the Maui County Council’s Budget, Finance and Economic Development Committee, council members heard testimony from more than a dozen people about the tourism proposal. 

Most Maui residents who testified during the meeting supported the cap on transient accommodations. However, vacation rental owners and their representatives expressed concerns about capping transient accommodations.

The measure to limit vacation rentals is part of a 400-page tourism management report. The plan includes multiple proposals, ranging from banning transient accommodations in certain neighborhoods, green energy requirements for vacation rentals, regulating peer-to-peer car rentals and others. 

A temporary investigative group that included four county council members — Chair Alice Lee, Vice Chair Keani Rawlins-Fernandez, Shane Sinenci and Tamara Paltin — developed the plan.

Supporters of the measure conveyed that it is getting harder to live on Maui, with one resident saying she was renting an office because she couldn’t afford housing with her low-paying salary. 

Albert Perez with the Maui Tomorrow Foundation, which is a nonprofit focused on sustainable planning and energy development, said he supported the proposal to cap tourism. He wants Maui to focus on quality over quantity, such as redeveloping hotels, in order to command higher prices. He also thought economic diversification should focus on education and agriculture, especially value-added products. 

Those who opposed the measure included a representative with the Realtors Association of Maui, who said that limiting vacation rentals might impact economic growth and development, which would affect the livelihoods of locals. 

Airbnb spokesperson Toral Patel said the company is concerned that restricting vacation rentals on Maui “could have many unintended consequences to the local economy.” 

“Airbnb played a critical role in pandemic recovery, lifting up local hosts as well as many local businesses that they support from cleaning and maintenance services to design and landscaping,” she added. 

On Maui, tourism reached a record high in 2019 with 3 million. During 2020, as travel to Hawaii was significantly slowed due to the pandemic, less than a million visitors arrived in the county. Now, tourism levels have mostly rebounded with more than 2.3 million tourists coming to Maui in 2021, according to the Hawaii Tourism Authority. 

Currently, there is no limit to the number of vacation rentals allowed on Maui, but a two-year moratorium on building new visitor accommodations became law in January after the Maui County Council voted to override Mayor Michael Victorino’s veto of Bill 48. If the new proposal to cap accommodations is passed, it would remove the moratorium.