By design, Hawaii has become unaffordable for most travelers

On some islands, the average hotel room rates are now $400 to $600 per night.

This is by design: Hawaii has decided it wants only luxury, wealthy visitors. Other countries and destinations have chosen this path too – fewer visitors, each paying far higher fees for everything.

Hawaii is now seeing fewer visitors, but those visitors are spending more ― and this is what the state prefers. 

Hawaii hotels are strategically increasing their prices (sfgate.com)

Only the elite will be able to travel to many destinations.

Ordinary people are no longer welcome.

Update: Honolulu has banned short term rentals of less than 90 days duration; this is currently blocked by a Court but it may return.

Hotel taxes currently run about 18% of your nightly fee.

The State has proposed to raise that to 33% statewide- but only for short term (e.g. AirBnb) rentals. They had planned to implement this new tax on July 1, 2023, but then postponed it to Jan 1, 2024, and that date is also in doubt. Many say this selective tax is unconstitutional.

The State says they have 10 million annual visitors – they don’t want them but they do want their money. Consequently, the State is planning to make visits extremely expensive so that only wealthy people can visit and leave lots of cash.

I have never been to Hawaii (or much of anywhere). I did make a full plan to go there in March, but we chose not to because at the time, we could not find do-able air travel.

Even though we live on the US west coast, every option was mostly 30 hours of flight connections.

This is because we live in a smaller community that lost much of its air service thanks to public health, including 4 flights a day to a regional, much larger airport that was previously an option for transfers. The result is that all non-local regional travel has become a full day – or longer – time consumer. And expensive.