2005 DBEDT Recommendations re TVRs
This report has been cataloged as follows:
Hawai`i. Dept. of Business, Economic Development and Tourism.
Planning for sustainable tourism; project summary report. Honolulu: 2005.
1. Tourism-Planning-Hawaii.
2. Tourism-Government policy-Hawaii.
3. Sustainable development-Hawaii.
G155.H3.H32.2005
Hawaii Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism December 2005
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Research needs to be done in terms of identifying the optimal mix of visitors from key markets in terms of economic, environmental, and social benefits and costs. In addition to considering Socio-Cultural and Public Input Consultant.
• The State and counties should begin to define recreational real estate (vacation homes, etc.) as a separate economic activity, meriting both analysis and planning in its own right.
• Modify the in-flight survey of visitors and returning residents to record vacation homeowners or their nonpaying guests. While the numbers in this category will be relatively small compared to traditional visitors, this will produce a database for follow-up research into issues such as occupancy levels, initial vs. subsequent expenditures, location (on- vs. offresort), demographic characteristics, opinions and attitudes, etc.
• In initial follow-up research, focus on learning about the extent to which part-time residents are making concentrated purchases in selected residential areas or, especially, “agricultural subdivisions” outside resorts. Such research should include likely future expansion of actual housing structures (as opposed to investment in unimproved land) in agricultural subdivisions for part-time residential use.
• Use the State “Rural” land use classification and appropriate county zoning labels for purposeful designation of recreational real estate projects that lack hotels or other classic “Resort” characteristics. That is, because recreational real estate is a rising and enduring market reality, plan for it – not just screen against it – in agricultural or other non-resort areas where demand is likely to occur. There will be many places where such activity will not be desired, but there must also be mechanisms for determining where it should be allowed and encouraged.
• Work with Realtor organizations that collect residential housing sale and value numbers on each island to explore the feasibility for separate reporting of data in areas where buyers are primarily full-time residents vs. areas where buyers are primarily part-time residents.
• As any Sustainable Tourism Systems are developed at State or county levels, provide for inclusion of resort-residential developers, off-resort developers or Realtors specializing in vacation property, and relevant homeowners’ associations in collaborative planning bodies.
• Petition the U.S. Bureau of the Census to gather future housing data in a way that provides more detailed information about the current category “held for seasonal, recreational, or occasional use” (SROU). This SROU category currently combines second homes, timeshare, and some other uses, and it would help Hawai`i to have separate data on these various uses.
• The State should also expand its regular tourism research program to gather more
information about two other emerging non-traditional forms of tourism in Hawai`i –
timeshare and residential-area transient vacation rentals.
• The American Resort Development Association (ARDA) sponsored studies of Hawai`i’s timeshare industry in 1997 and 2000, and these could provide a baseline – and potential Planning for Sustainable Tourism: Summary Report
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• The American Resort Development Association (ARDA) sponsored studies of Hawai`i’s timeshare industry in 1997 and 2000, and these could provide a baseline – and potential collaborator – for a regular (if not necessarily annual) time-series analysis of key timeshare statistics.
• Bed-and-breakfasts and vacation rentals in residential areas pose a difficult problem
because they are largely illegal, though counties lack resources for enforcement. Available information exists primarily on the Web.
• To improve understanding of potential future tourism growth under existing land use
permits, the State should work with counties to standardize reporting of “permitted but unbuilt” visitor units – including, if possible, residential units on resorts or in
designated recreational real estate projects.
• DBEDT’s annual Visitor Plant Inventory currently collects information from each county planning department about “Planned Additions and New Developments.” This is a useful project-by-project monitoring of expected short-term changes. However, different counties report by different levels of visitor units (e.g., Maui generally only tracks hotel or timeshare projects, while O`ahu reports condos and even B&B’s) … and none currently appear to track resort-residential units.
• The State and the HTA should focus some visitor research more specifically on the
questions of satisfaction with key underlying natural and cultural assets, in order to
determine the extent to which concerns about “unique sense of place” or “product
quality” (vs. external factors or economics) are actually affecting likelihood of return to Hawai`i.
• Modify the current Visitor Satisfaction and Activity Survey, which now gathers only indirect information on this topic by asking only those who say they are unlikely to return why that is so. To provide a better “early warning system,” we need to be tracking general satisfaction on the part of a representative cross-section of all visitors in regard to satisfaction.
• In research conducted in international markets, explicitly explore the importance of such factors, as well as the importance to foreign travelers of various emerging international certifications and standards for “nature tourism” that Hawai`i (along with much of the rest of the United States) may not yet have adopted.
• Counties should explore legalizing, but more effectively regulating bed-and-breakfasts – and possibly also vacation rentals in certain residential areas, though probably with tighter standards because of the lack of on-site hosts. Key decisions to be made at county levels would need to include:
• Maximum number of structures/units permitted in a given residential area. Such a legal maximum would reassure residents their neighborhoods will not gradually evolve into a de facto hotel area, and give both existing operators and residents more freedom and incentive to report subsequent illegal operations.
• Noise, parking, and other nuisance control factors. If these were spelled out in codes readily available to neighbors, residents could report violations (or informally discuss them with proprietors) without the sense that their report would result in the total elimination of a business depended upon by a close neighbor.
• Funds for county enforcement of such standards could come from dedication of the
Transient Accommodations Tax for such units (i.e., return to counties) and/or from higher property taxes applied to these units than to surrounding “purely residential” properties.
