Those of us who host bed and breakfast guests in our homes hope that this will be the year we can finally come out of the shadows.
Blocked from obtaining permits for nearly 30 years, we’ve been painted too often as outlaws, precluded from sharing the significant contributions we make to our local economy, city tax revenues and visitor experience.
As our City Council-members address next week how to manage this burgeoning sector of our visitor industry, we welcome the opportunity to find a way forward that is fair and responsive to all.
Our sector has attracted a surging new wealth of visitors interested in venturing beyond Waikiki’s borders in search of a more local, home-based experience.
Bed and breakfasts are nothing new in Hawaii. They have long abounded across Europe and much of the world, an accepted and honored tradition. We believe their recent growth here has been fueled by both the new accessibility provided by online sites such as Airbnb coupled with unprecedented numbers of residents struggling to afford rising mortgages and rent.
We are not offshore investors selling vacation rental properties. We welcome visitors into our personal homes, typically sharing a spare room. Because our guests stay with us, we find they tend to be more respectful visitors, and as residents, we also try to lessen the impact on our neighbors by providing things like off-street parking. Most of us host guests only sporadically, doing this not as a full-time job but for the extra income that enables us to stay in our homes.
Who are we? We are parents with children away at college struggling to cover tuition and a mortgage. We are residents who have lost a partner or spouse, suddenly needing to bridge the financial gap. We are seniors on fixed incomes invigorated by sharing our homes and island life, and grateful for the income that helps us to age in place.
Our guests have helped us afford to stay here and we have helped them afford to visit, frequently directing the money they saved on lodging to our neighborhood small businesses. Often they are former residents, budget-conscious families, or more seasoned travelers looking for a more authentic experience of what it is to live and work in Hawaii.
One mother visiting recently needed to be within walking distance of Mid-Pacific Institute, where her son was starting his second year as an exchange student. They needed a home with a kitchen and laundry and were thrilled that their accommodation also had a piano. In this case, and so many others, Waikiki doesn’t fit the bill.
Isn’t this the definition of aloha — sharing our homes, our food, our communities? We should encourage this rather than try to force this sector, estimated at up to one-third of our visitors, back to Waikiki. Many will simply go elsewhere.
Each community should be free to consider how it could most benefit from hosting these visitors, while controlling the impacts with reasonable rules. Making those of us without permits Class C felons, subject to $10,000-a-day fines, without offering any avenue to obtaining legality does not seem fair.
We think Councilman Ikaika Anderson has taken the sensible approach, offering a path to legitimacy to certain bed and breakfasts, those with an owner or resident manager on site, as a first step.
We live here, too, and care about the quality of life in our communities. We feel we boost the success of those communities. We want to start the conversation. Let’s do it out in the open, not behind closed doors.
