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?
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.