Vacation Rental Bill Could Starve Windward Businesses That Cater To Tourists … Already suffering from Covid-19’s blow to tourism and the continuing shut-down of travel from Japan, small businesses in Kailua are bracing for the impact of a bill to crack down on illegal short-term rentals.
Ali McMahon has endured more than her fair share of challenges in the past few years running her Kailua clothing boutiques Olive, which sells women’s clothes, and Oliver, for men.
There was the shutdown of the Pali Highway due to mudslides in early 2019, which hindered travel to the Windward side for months. Then in August 2019, the City and County of Honolulu started imposing an ordinance, Bill 89, to crack down on illegal vacation rentals. That caused rental operators to take thousands of units off the market, dampening tourism in Kailua and Lanikai.
Less than a year later came Covid-19 and, in March 2020, quarantine orders that largely shut down travel to Hawaii for months. Now that tourists are finally starting to come back to Oahu, Kailua is feeling left out. Vacation rentals are still relatively scarce, she said. And rental cars that people could drive from Waikiki, at least for awhile, were hard to find.
