dockman

There are going to be billions of $$ of govt $$ flowing into maui....i suspect if they wanted the govt could pay the car rental companies and get reimbursed by insurance. And if you have no car i would think any car would be helpful. There are lots and lots of rental cars that are not mustangs or jeeps. Easy to criticize every idea but what Maui needs is helpful ideas and they can sort it all out as to what may or may not be helpful or possible.

Been here a long time but never thought about that old song til recently and never even thought that the pink hotel was the royal hawaiian....thanks for the tip...she is still a wonderful old hotel...the first night i ever spent in hawaii was at the royal hawaiian in 1972...good place to start my love of hawaii.

Another thing that was reported last night on local news....the car rental companies on maui have all these cars normally out on the road but with no tourists they all got returned...problem is the car rental lots can not even begin to hold them all so they are scrambling to rent parking lots and find places to park them...meantime lahaina residents lost lots of cars that were burned to a crisp... During covid the car rentals had a similar problem and on oahu they rented the parking lot of Aloha Stadium and other lots which was wall to wall rentals...eventually they shipped most of them to the mainland to be sold...problem was they shipped too many and then suddenly tourists started to pour into hawaii again and there was a severe shortage of rental cars and prices shot through the roof...It has only recently returned to some normal balance of car availabity matchind demand.. and NOW Maui....it is a fact that many maui people are going to have to buy a car to replace their burned ones....i highly doubt there are enough cars for sale on maui to fill the demand....also apparently a lot of people are having trouble getting claims resolved with insurance companies (imagine that)... I have to wonder if somehow a deal could not be done for a lot of the excess rental cars to be sold to local maui people in need of a car and payment postponed until the insurance settlements are made and then eventually the $$ can be sorted out? I suspect it will be a long time before Maui tourism and rental car demand returns to pre fire levels so I would guess the car rentals may well ship a lot of cars off to the mainland. It seems at least on the surface this could be a win win for the locals and the car rental companies? Just yet another in the domino effect caused by the horrific Maui fires. Hopefully some in hawaii leadership positions are at least considering how to potentially solve the car problem as not having a car on maui would be tough as public transport is not very good.

I am not here to argue or try and convince anyone of anything. Having lived here for 45 years I have seen and heard lots as to tourism, hotels, cruises, cost of living, how much and what kind of toursists would be best, overdevelopment, locals being priced out and on and on. One person's idea of affordable and what is a modest profit is open to discussion. There are a lot of challenges that will have to be dealt with over the coming years as the can has been kicked down the road for a long time. Having said that all things considered I still think it is the best place on the planet to live. And i for one hope that the old Joni Mitchell lyric is still remembered..."They paved Paradise and put up a parking lot" And back to the original topic I am hoping for the best for Maui as it is one of the worst disasters that I could ever imagine.

Of course lot of $$ goes to corps whether hotels or ships....the point that you seem to miss is that building more and more hotels adds more concrete and highrises ON the islands that a cruise ship does not add. I have lived here for 45 years and have seen more and more buildings and many people say enough....there are pros and cons to more cruise ships but they generally do not take more land or involve pouring more concrete.

I certainly can't speak for the Hawaiian people but can tell you that many are opposed to more and more hotel/condo developments. On the other hand a lot of people make their living from tourists so that is always a factor. Part of the thinking is that ships are sort of floating hotels that would come into the ports where people would get off and take all kind of tours, passengers would go shopping, spend a pile of $$, the ship would likely buy all kinds of supplies from local vendors/suppliers, there would be more jobs at the ports tour companies shops etc.....and best of all the toursist would get back on the ship and sail away at the end of the day leaving lots of $$ behind. Of course as said there are limits as to how many passengers how many ships in one day etc...i suspect that could be somewhat controlled by local laws or port restrictions...it is a balancing act between more and more concrete and 24 hour a day tourism and possible filling some of the high demand via cruise ships. Many many of the dollars spent in Hawaii hotels do not necessarily stay in hawaii as they are owned by huge corporations and the profits may well flow back to the corporate arm...I would guess that most locals are pretty tired of more and more condos and hotels being built everywhere most of which is controlled/owned by foreign owners willing to pay millions ++ for a condo that sits empty half or more of the time while many locals are piled on top of each other because they have been priced out of the market. How a young hawaii couple could ever afford to buy a home unless they inherieted something or had a very high paying job is a mystery. The downpayment alone is likely to be 150 to 200 k plus can u qualify for the rest in a mortgage...condo HOA fees alone are more than many can afford. Hawaii is not a cheap place to live and slowly the locals are being forced to move to vegas or washington or somewhere else to have any hope of buying a home. So maybe just maybe cruise ships are at least a partial answer as to a way to keep the toursit money flowing without building more and more hotels? One thing is pretty certain and that is if u let the developers build all they want they would want it all.

i thought $250 for 14 days? Did that change?

The only way Hawaii will ever offer a variety of cruises like 7 day, 3 day, 4 day, 10 day interisland cruises is to have a carve out of the pvsa act that allows foreign built and crewed ships to operate freely instead of having the POA restrictions. Currently the only way around that is to come all the way from the west coast with a vancouver or mexico stop or go all the way to fanning island and back ...either of those options requires a lot of sea days ....and even with that the sale price of those cruises is less than a basic 7 day interisland cruise on most POA sailings due to the higher cost of the pvsa act. In my opinion Hawaii without the pvsa restrictions would have several ships based here year round offering affordable 3, 4, 7, and 10 day interisland cruises...especially as hotel prices as well as F & B car rentals interisland air etc would make those cruises extremely popular as the price would be well below a land based Hawaii vacation. One of these decades it will happen but probably not anytime soon.

Most all are being housed in kaanapali hotels as well as airbnb, peoples homes who have welcomed displaced to live for free at their houses etc...from what i have seen i do not think a cruise ship could have in any way rescued people from the burning fires..there was no way they could have brought any tenders etc into lahaina during the fires as boats were on fire in the harbor and the wind was blowing massive amounts of furnace hot embers everywhere.. it is /was horrible how fast and how hot that fire was...a lot of lahaina was old wooden buildings that got hit by a blast furnace and were gone in seconds/minutes.. .a tiny bit of good news is that the experts have gone over the banyan tree in detail and seem to think that it will survive it all which does give a tiny bit of hope to many who loved that tree as a center point of lahaina for 150 years

Good luck to you. I can tell you living here and watching story after story and interviews of maui people is enough to bring you to tears almost daily...the big worldwide media of course covers a lot but the local tv stations dig much deeper and it is even worse than most outside of hawaii can imagine....it is hard to watch but the people living it have been through pure hell.

I attended some of those hearings....there were some high paid lobbyist there totally against anything that would open any tiny cracks in the entire jones pvsa acts...between their power and Inouye pushing for the ncl deal there was pretty much zero chance of any carve out.

Yes i was around in the travel biz in Hawaii when it all happened....it appeared to many that Inouye was determined to push the deal for a variety of reasons some of which made no sense at all other than for his PR people to say look at what Inouye is doing for hawaii workers.... in the end he was a very powerful force and got what he wanted....and NCL seemed very happy to have gotten what they thought was a monopoly that would be a gold mine...so now here we are with one ship that charges several times the price of non usa staffed ship and yet they apparntley are challenged to make a profit....to most rational people that might be a good indication that the business model is not very viable especially as hawaii hotel and land vacation rates continue to soar and yet this floating "hotel" struggles....personally i would like to see a carve out to allow a work around of the PVSA and open the Hawaii market up to cruise competiton but there are many powerful people and lobbyists who do not want that to happen.

As said if NCL doesn't like the deal that they made they should pull out....they obviously did not do a good job of researching the operating costs in Hawaii. Maybe then Hawaii might take a good hard look at why the NCL model did not work and reconsider the entire cruise situation in the islands. Hawaii could and should be a major cruise destination but it obviously does not work the way it is currently structured

if they are not profitable then they can pull out of the hawaii market i suppose? with crew costs 5 times an international crew maybe it was never ever a good idea to begin with..

HNL elks lodge re Maui. Members have patiently waited to hear from me about what the Honolulu Elks Lodge will do to help Maui’s people. The Board of Directors met last night and with well attended members at-large there, the board decided on several items. The board vetted the various helpful organizations providing services to Maui’s people in need. The board decided that the Hawaii Community Foundation “Maui Strong Fund” would be the organization to assist monetarily (give money, not in-kind donations). The website is: https://www.hawaiicommunityfoundation.org/ There were two motions approved which will now be decided upon at the Lodge meeting on August 22nd, 6:30pm. The first motion is for the lodge to donate $25,000 to the Maui Strong Fund. The second motion is for the Honolulu Elks Lodge to match monetary donations up to a total amount of $500,000, made by Elks lodges, members, families or friends, to the Hawaii Community Foundation's Maui Strong Fund, through the end of this fiscal year. Again, these are board motions – the lodge (members) will decide “yes” or “no” on them at the August 22nd meeting. Mahalo for your concern. Live Aloha and with Mālama to all.

Yes it is.

yes all tied into the PSA requirements

Yes....the american crew part has been a major headache since day 1 for NCL hawaii...it is both the wages and benefits that they must provide...and according to many reports a lot of the american crew just does not and will not work as hard as the international crews who may have much fewer job options than an american so lot of turnover....NCL received a waiver as the POA was not really built in USA shipyard and essentially has a monopoly on the 7 day hawaii cruise market...

and the lowest 7 day hawaii on POA NCL princess in sept oct? $1200-$1400 ppdo....inside room plus port

just looked...lots of sep princess alaska cruise right now for $359 ppdo...

as i said...yes i know the expenses in hawaii are higher....do you have the figures on POA revs and expenses? I would love to see them... and i do know a bit about doing biz in hawaii as have been here for 45++ years.... ok alaska??..i saw cruise after cruise in alaska this summer on princess and others some of them were around $499 ppdo for seven day cruises....i actually went on 21 days of alaska for little over $100 a day single room....right now there are alaska cruises avail in early sep for less than $500 a person? Never ever saw an NCL hawaii cruise anywhere near that cheap,,if you can find one for me i will sign up today.

Far as i can tell they do not break out the numbers for POA....but if you take a look at the prices they charge...try $1399 or so plus taxes for inside room for 7 day cruise...and seem to run full a lot...of course when you compare the cost of hotels/food/transport in hawaii these days i guess it is better for many than trying to do it themselves...on the other hand 7 day carib cruises can often be found for about $499 ppdo or sometimes even less ...and yes i know their expenses are higher in hawaii thanks to all the psa requirements...but ....still think 50 K rather paltry ...anyway at least they donated so good for that....i hope a lot of the hotel and other companies in hawaii will also donate which i bet they will...

NCL has donated 50 k to maui....seems rather paltry considering how much $ they make on having a virtual monopoly on interisland cruises for decades....they make more than 50 k in a single day in a single port selling shore excurisons....hopefully they will come up with a bit more substantial contribution.

It is just horrible to watch all the local coverage. Of course a few sleazebags have already appeared more interested in pointing fingers and filing lawsuits than taking care of the massive problems at hand like recovering and ID bodies most of all of which were burned to dust...the fire was so hot it melted metal and human bone fragments are about all that is left to be recovered...they now have 20 cadaver dogs flown in from mainland...they are taking dna samples from relatives to try and identify the dead. They had some problems with a few people ignoring signs and trapsing around and walking through the ash that may well have peoples remains. There have also been some realtors who have apparently called some of the most vulnerable people trying to buy their lots as in additon to all the other problems apparently the entire area is full of toxic chemicals etc that is all going to have to be cleaned up taking a long long time and realtors hoping to encourage people to sell now . The governor today said that there are some unscrupulos people trying to scare people to sell but he has now got a bunch of local maui layers lined up to try and stop that garbage. Listening to the police chief , mayor, fire chief, hawaiian electric, human society, fema the governor and more everyday certainly paints a different picture than a lot of the big mainland news outlets seem to want to push. It was not a simple fire and a lot of very tough decisions had to be made very quickly and some maybe could have been better....but there will be time to sort that all out a bit later. The governor says he has spoken with Biden several times and Biden does not want to come yet and distract resources etc as there is so much that is going on right now...so gov and Biden have ageed that it would be better for all concerned if he delays visit for a while rather than show up and complicate things further. The Gov says the feds have made it clear that whatever Maui needs the feds will get to them. There are already 450 fema people there not to mention lot of military resources helping...in additon lots of volunteers both local and out of state. Most all the tourists have now left at the request of Maui officials as they try and sort out moving displaced locals into hotels airbnb etc...if is not quite as simple as some would believe....there are many celebs who have homes on maui and several are there now...oprah is there and has been trying to help ...in the middle of it all apparently paris hilton and her husband decided to come on vacation and stay in wailea for fun...as you can imagine that has gotten a very negative reaction thus far and her PR people are trying to spin it all...my guess is paris will be writing a big check to donate to try and salvage a bit of her reputation...Bezos who has a home there has donated 100 million which is certainly nice (from his net worth of 161 BILLION)...the rock and a few other big name hawaii celebs are also donating etc..three will likely be many more celebs with maui ties who i fully expect will step and donate...willie nelson has had a home in upcountry maui for years and it would not at all surprise me to see old willie assemble and do some sort of big fundraiser concert with a lot of his musician friends (who can say no to willie) and they could likely raise a ton of $$ it is depressing as hell to watch all the local coverage but of course sitting at home on oahu and watching it on tv is certainly nothing like the people who are still living through it every minute ands for years to come...it is truly heartbreaking anyway...count your lucky stars that u were not in lahaina one week ago right now...

or better yet ask her if she doesn';t have a good friend or ? to share a room with her?