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Home My WebLink AboutCOM 0675.377 2022-2024P / pcpm) BI H 121 COMN. 6m From: Penny Lee Sent: Friday, July 5, 2024 3:24 PM U �� To: Council Testimony CD c-) Subject: Testimony in opposition to bill 121, 122, 123 tin CD —; Testimony in opposition to bill 121, 122, 123, T'r' and in support of economic impact study -� r w Aloha County Council, r Bill 121, 122 and 123 are not very well thought through. They might look ok to you on paper, but in reality they have many unintended consequences on real people's life that have not been considered. Way too many layers of complicated regulation piled on what is in the end just a small family or farm business. Why do you need the "gotcha" declaration/affidavit that your house fulfills "all health, safety and code"? Nobody even has the competence to be able to sign this. Why do you need these large fines? The amount of complaints received does not justify this. Why do you threaten people with building code violations just because they want to do a vacation rental? What is the overall goal, to destroy all vacation rentals outside resort/urban zones? The county should make a definitive statement that vacation rentals are and will be part of the diversified tourism economy of the Big Island and that they are valued small businesses in all our districts. Having them exclusively in resort and urban zoning makes no sense, creating a monopoly for large developers and cutting out our local families and farmers from the tourism economy. This also gives resorts a way to expand, circumventing the need for actual hotel zoning and permitting processes. Vacation rentals is a way to make a living on this island, why are you so keen to destroy these opportunities for our families here? We don't have real jobs in our area, we have to create our own jobs. A lot of people directly and indirectly depend on the economic activity created by vacation rentals. Please do a comprehensive economic impact study to understand the multi -facetted vacation rental economy on our island before further regulation. Thank you for your thoughtful consideration, Penny Lee Comm. Oel Ref. To: Ref. Da.LW- - 8 �2012_41 Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics about Vacation Rentals — Big Island Edition Has anybody fact -checked the numbers? In the written testimony for the Windward Planning Commission Hearing on the TAR Bill 121 on 4/2/2024 you will find the testimony by Stephanie Donoho for Kohala Coast Resort Association with attached 4 pages of a report from alltherooms.com. Stephanie Donoho (Registered Lobbyist for Kohala Coast Resort Association) states in her testimony: I nlallIt , I'm auachnlg, a wpolt fiom \\ \k \\ AllihcRoo i , com as an addendum to twr \\ ripen tesUnlon� . It Shtl\\. thal there ere more than 19,000 units on II'm Iiii Island adNcrtised through Ali hill). VRBO, Ilome;\\\ay and snrlilar\tehsites Burin the last Cv. I hose units ranuc floilt ,ludios, to a silwle hedrooill in ulmrunc•s htmle, to rnurr honle, \\ ith ill it) I hedrtxnrls. I I• the al, erage unit had lust ' hedrtumis, that would mean more than 38,000 rooms were adt ertl,ed on our Island last year. III colllhallson, the Hotels along, the Kohala ('oast off lawaii Island Olauna Kea Beach I lotcl, \\•estin Ilaptina. \\ aiktlltr,l Beach NlaiIIon. Ihiton Waikoltla, Atibcrge \lath, Lain, I allnlont Orchid. and I oul "Neascros I lualalall Ilan e a conthincd total of 2,915 hotel rooms If you take a closer look, it appears the data is unfortunately flawed and misleading. 1. The report combines listings from Airbnb, Booking.com, Homeaway, VRBO seemingly without deduplication. Most vacation rentals are listed on several booking sites. Market Characteristics SELECT NIA?hEt' Filters P"'outy l Ipe Is Vpnaged Is Active I..,, Faht, t Inle IS Rtondr Instant go .. sleeps Alin .. `.tax... Reds Ntimhet Of Rev;... Reims thn Stay L Ma. _ Oath_ Rating Revenue LIM Average D:1.. Average Ac $213M $275.05 6,947 hoviLleF LiMmo DIIAIII)LILIUIi n r Booked Nig... Ilo"I" IIIopelties 775,094 4,546 19,655 Sleeps 11I� ■ �_t m 1—A 11J JiY' 2. The report includes property types like aparthotel, boutique hotel, condo, hotel, resort which seems to indicate that units inside resorts are included in the numbers (see blue bar chart "Property Types"). Remember the report was supposed to be about vacation rentals? This chart is very similar to Jerry Gibson's earlier report 1/31/2024 for the Big Island (pic on the right), except the label "condohotel" has now been changed to "condo" in Stephanie Donoho's testimony 3/26/2024 (pic on the left). Property Types Property Types 6 CA. a WE 3. The red, orange, blue bar chart titled "Hosts, Gross Revenue and Properties by Portfolio size": Again, probably they did not account for the same unit listed on multiple sites. Again the word "host" is not the same as "owner" on these listing sites. Most likely those are property management companies that advertise multiple listings. Especially if condohotels and resort units are included. The large orange and red bar on the very left is just really strange. Supposedly some host has 8,170 listings exactly and makes a gigantic amount of gross revenue, like $400 Billion Dollars? Not likely, I would be looking into the underlying data on that one. For comparison: Hawaii County budget for FY 2023-24 was $1.19 billion. f lost%. Gross Revenue and Properties by Portf... cress Revenue n•r� ; - 1 < 9 0 21XV 1.U) k0.33 aP>) -losm oro0e'Ves 4. The big green pie chart with table below "Property Operator Groups by Revenue by Portfolio Size", this is for the Big Island: 5,253 Hosts or 46% of all Hosts have 1-3 vacation rentals listed (portfolio size) Interesting, lots of small-scale operators, we have heard otherwise. Also adding up the column "Properties" results in 11,420 total number of properties. That again includes condohotel, resort units etc and duplicates. The last line in the table again is questionable, a "0" host has 8170 properties and makes $545 Billion Dollars, nah. But of course if you add that weird line, than you get to the 19,655 properties Stephanie Donoho cites. Gross Revenue by Properties Under Managern... rwi VISOR Property Operator Groups by Revenue by Port Portfolio Bin PORTFO.., Group Hosts SIZE Gross Revenue Properties 2 3,228 1 1 S61,948,623.41 3,228 4 888 2 3 S97,8%,290.27 2,02% 4 310 4 9 $153,965,754.18 1,686 S 54 10 19 $145,683,568.01 730 6 43 70 45 $576,3R2,144.11 1,334 7 12 50 91 $752,687,862.38 777 8 11 1(X1 - 207 S5.499,339,246.20 1,640 9 0 8170 S54S,833,050,991.13 8,235 5. Stephanie Donoho then compares the number of 2,915 "hotel rooms", only counting just the hotels on the Kohala coast she represents, with the inflated island wide number of 19,000 "vacation rentals", For comparison: The Hawaii Tourism Authority HTA 2023 Visitor Plant Inventory states "Hotels continued to comprise the bulk of Hawai'i Island's visitor plant inventory (5,735 units) [Figure 6)." It also shows an additional 1,971 timeshares. That is 7,706 units. The HTA report has no data on how many condos and vacation rentals are in resorts. Island of Ilawai'i Thu overall visitot unit cuutu un ILiwafi Island LoUled 11.119 units, an Increase of SA percent rnnyaaretl Io the previnus Veal. • Ilowls continued to comprise tilt• hulk of Ilawai'i Island's vlsitui plant inventory (7,,73; units) (Fignr 6l. • In 2023. a lower proportion of a'iS11Ur tints were categorized in the Luxury category crIII pmed In previous yea Is (41,0 put cent). • Fariflc 1-1 (fka Kona Seasu!e Ilotel) reupentd the Ienlaiolog units in the Lower fwl tiun of the hotel alter I euovatiul]s. n,,ere6naval I I d I.-Imtmup by na It TSpt 12JeC tl.til Oil] '0 S]S 1I,113 ]laoc Ica = Slit o ]ttt a I tux 4 2") 2C21 2c22 d2) ha,�tlli}e, „ It US -9 nS -6 SAS 11II Itlltl e l�lll:kl to In ' 24 IS 9SII 7)J 21S 192 21- Cr —1 al] " PS LI •H-.Wh 99 Sa S3 •N�It inS S,It ]t(L_ s11', vax.r Dr-o ea 2112 21p� 2iYs ; 7:, +t»:r 0 i, N rt 6. Stephanie Donoho then takes the already inflated number of 19,000 "vacation rentals" from the alltherooms.com report and doubles it "per bedroom" to 38,000 vacation rental "rooms". Considering that Hotel rooms routinely sleep a family of 4 with 2 beds and/or an additional sleeper sofa, this is not a fair comparison. Furthermore, the Resorts she represents don't just offer hotel rooms, there are condos, town houses, timeshares, vacation rentals, villas and residences to choose from. Many of these are also listed on the same booking sites, so they are all counted in her "vacation rental" numbers, for example on VRBO: ai ) More trmI v i Geltheapp it United Swtes I Nara: �.tl Trip Boards i .1 rikl Breathtaking 3BR Penthouse on Hapuna ser Beach! $1,500 N.,,• . I , i Mauna Kea Resort Villa, Ocean Views With Pool & Spa In Backyard 4611 �\ $1,150 Expansive Mauna Kea Resort Home. 3 private bdrms and massive kids suite! lit *5.0 -... G. lh—pp n Ile►" t1 •�.m e. wan "' . ... ..... i . ft Mauna Lani - Luxury 4 Bedroom Home - Sleeps 10 U M r1 - --� t - Luxury . Privacy • Sleeps 10 • Golf Cart Included l � luxury h..1....., . .ete Pool &Golf Course Views! For comparison UHero Housing Factbook on page 23 shows the following vacation rental numbers for the Big Island: 6,847 vacation rentals, The UHero report has no data on how many of these vacation rentals are in resorts. WHEN will someone CHECK the data? So this is the data being used to rile up the public and justify these draconian bills against vacation rentals?