Airseats Increasing / Vacation Rental Regulation / 2021 Visitor Trends Continue
Airseats
Airseats to Hawaii for the February to April 2022 period are looking strong for the neighbor islands. Compared with 2019 total seats to Hawaii are 1.9% higher. Kahului Maui is the big winner with 31% more, while Kona is up 9.3%, Lihue is up 18.3% but Hilo is down 12.4%. Honolulu is down 11.4% because of closed international routes.
Japanese Visitors are Coming Back When?
Japan is now allowing a limited number of residents to return home without quarantining which is the first step in opening the floodgates to international travel. We now hear that initial bookings by Japanese wholesalers have been postponed from April to August.
Vacation Rental Regulation
The Honolulu City Council is advancing a bill to increase the minimum rental period from 30 days to 90 days for homes outside of resort areas. The legislation appears to have strong support, with 7 of 9 council members voting to advance the bill. The 30-day minimum was viewed as a loophole that had allowed homes in residential areas to continue to participate in the short-term vacation rental market. Oahu’s vacation rental supply of about 5,200 units in January was about 29% below the pre-pandemic level, driven by a 42% decrease in supply outside of Waikiki. This suggests that the 2019 legislation has succeeded in removing some of the un-licensed supply from the market.
Erik Kloninger notes that overall, the State’s supply of vacation rentals in January was 34% below January 2020ʻs supply of 25,700 units. This decrease in the supply of vacation rentals on all islands has likely contributed to the robust rates that neighbor island hotels have been charging in recent months. It also may be that there’s just more mainlanders visiting the neighbor islands. Speaking of more visitors, this was seen on a car in Maui:
