Maui may match pre-COVID arrivals in summer

Mainland travel outperforming expectations

Maui County may reach pre-pandemic tourism levels by this summer, according to Carl Bonham, executive director of the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization.

In recent months, Hawaii Tourism Authority's Maui Nui Destination Management Action Plan and UHERO projections said tourism wouldn't reach pre-pandemic levels for years.

However, vaccinations and the dominant U.S. visitor market outperforming expectations have accelerated the return of tourism and prompted UHERO to upgrade Hawaii's economic recovery in its second quarter forecast released last week.

Maui County in 2019 marked a historic high for visitor arrivals, totaling more than 3 million and pumping $5.13 billion into the economy.

Prior to the record year, Maui resident sentiment about the tourism industry had already been eroding for some time, HTA surveys show. But after the pandemic brought travel to a halt, concerns about overtourism only intensified. A recent grassroots Wailea Beach rally sought to draw attention to the lack of tourism management at the state and county level.

And, two bills before the Maui County Council -- one to place a moratorium on visitor accommodation building permits and one to reserve half of beach parking for residents -- are aimed at mitigating what many see as uncontrolled growth of the industry.

Bonham acknowledged in a recent Hawaii Economic Association talk that 2019 isn't a metric to measure success. UHERO's second quarter forecast said a full recovery will take several years.

Maui County shares many of the same struggles as other Hawaiian Islands, such as challenges in hiring, shortages of rental cars, rents turning upward in recent months and soaring home prices, according to UHERO's second quarter forecast.

One factor that distinguishes Maui, though, is the U.S. visitor market, Bonham said Wednesday.

"The one that really sort of benefits Maui the most is the fact that this recovery is really a U.S. visitor recovery," he said. "Maui in some ways is recovering faster than the Big Island, because the Big Island historically has relied on Japanese visitors, for example, who right now just aren't coming."

Big Island and Oahu's reliance on international travel, along with some visitors who wanted to go to Kauai but chose Maui instead due to more relaxed travel rules, strengthen Maui's position as a "premier destination for U.S. visitors."

Unemployment, however, wasn't as bad on the Big Island as it was on Maui.

Because of their greater dependence on tourism, with about 30 percent of their job bases in accommodation and food services, Kauai and Maui counties saw the sharpest economic decline.

At the trough of last year's COVID-19 recession, unemployment rates reached nearly 35 percent in Kauai and Maui counties, compared with 20 percent in Honolulu and Hawaii counties, the UHERO report said.

Built-up savings and pent-up demand will continue to drive the U.S. visitor market, economists said.

But where those visitors go and what kind of experience they are anticipating -- especially with many businesses operating at reduced capacity and others still closed -- remain to be seen.

"Now think about what if this summer we actually get to 2019 numbers of arrivals, which is very, very possible for Maui," Bonham told The Maui News on Wednesday. "Yet some percentage of the restaurants are still closed. And the ones that are open are only operating at 50 percent capacity either because of a mandate or because they haven't been able to get people back at work.

"So that experience is really, really different, right?" he added. "It's important that we make progress over the next three to four months and in getting everybody back to work (and) getting businesses back."

Bonham pointed out that UHERO Research Fellow James Mak has argued that overtourism is really about "individual locations rather than just sort of broad."

"You know, it's not that there are too many tourists everywhere all the time, it's that there are too many tourists at specific times and it's specific locations and/or we haven't spent the money to clean up our beach parks and deal with the overall number of people that are using our facilities," Bonham said.

"Is there something that the county can specifically do?" he added. "That's a good question."

With dozens of testifiers, many of whom spoke in support of the proposal, the council's Climate Action, Resilience and Environment Committee on Wednesday morning discussed a measure that would place a moratorium on building permits for hotels, resorts, timeshares, short-term vacation rental homes, bed and breakfasts and transient vacation rental units in South and West Maui until their respective community plan processes are complete.

The meeting recessed until Tuesday at 1:30 p.m.

The bill on proposed beach parking allocation has yet to be scheduled for committee discussion.

* Kehaulani Cerizo can be reached at kcerizo@mauinews.com.