Maui Tomorrow Encourages Community Support of the Visitor Accommodations Moratorium

[Updated 6/18/21]

Tourism on Maui has passed the point where it is serving residents, and is now negatively affecting our quality of life. While visitor arrivals have been breaking records lately, local resident sentiment about the visitor industry has fallen to an all-time low. This is a problem that is continuing to grow, and the first step in solving any problem is to stop making it worse. The proposed visitor accommodations moratorium will pause further development of new hotel, resort, timeshare, short-term rental homes, bed and breakfast homes, and transient vacation rental units. This moratorium will give us time to address the problem. 

In February of this year, the Maui County Council unanimously passed a resolution “EXPRESSING SUPPORT FOR SUSTAINABLE TOURISM, EMPHASIZING QUALITY OVER QUANTITY.” Unfortunately, this resolution was not binding on the Maui Planning Commission, which shortly thereafter approved a permit for a 170-room hotel in Kihei. Please ask the Maui County Council to pass an ordinance that will prevent this from happening. We need to pause the continued expansion of our already overbuilt visitor industry.

Please testify in SUPPORT of the proposed “MORATORIUM ON BUILDING PERMITS FOR VISITOR ACCOMMODATIONS.”

EVEN IF YOU HAVE TESTIFIED BEFORE, IT IS CRITICAL NOW. The hotel development industry is not going to take this lying down.

Also, please ask that the proposed bill be modified to include all of Maui County, and not just South and West Maui. Otherwise development of visitor accommodations will just shift to the rest of the county – for example, there are already several new hotels proposed in Wailuku and Kahului alone.

The bill will be discussed and testimony will be heard at the following meetings (more dates to be added soon)

• Monday, 5/17, 9:00am – Infrastructure and Transportation Committee 
• Wednesday, 5/19, 9:00am – Climate Action, Resilience, and Environment Committee 
• Friday, 6/18, 9:00am – The Moratorium Bill goes before the full Maui County Council for first reading. [Bill passed first reading!]
• Date TBD: The Moratorium Bill will go before the Maui County Council for the second and final reading.

More dates and information to be added.

MAHALO for helping to protect Maui’s future!