Maui

[mousefan73]

On 8/24/2023 at 2:42 AM, dockman said:

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.

 

 

Interesting as if our boat docks on October 10th I believe in Kahlauni, I have a car rental booked at that hotel down the street. I hope I have a car.. unless a local needs it. but I hope it's just not shipped off..

for the record we rented a small sedan cheap, not a mustang or Jeep ( my mom coudnt even get in one)

Edited August 25, 2023 by mousefan73

[CruiserBruce]

1 hour ago, mousefan73 said:

Interesting as if our boat docks on October 10th I believe in Kahlauni, I have a car rental booked at that hotel down the street. I hope I have a car.. unless a local needs it. but I hope it's just not shipped off..

for the record we rented a small sedan cheap, not a mustang or Jeep ( my mom coudnt even get in one)

Its Kahalui.

 

It takes time for the shipping off of cars. Another consideration is there will be a lot of cars rented by the FEMA and other folks, in support of their assignments.

[DCwom]

1 hour ago, CruiserBruce said:

Its Kahalui.

 

It takes time for the shipping off of cars. Another consideration is there will be a lot of cars rented by the FEMA and other folks, in support of their assignments.

There seems to be a perception by some that Maui is gone? We're planning a May 2024 POA cruise and I expect that Maui will be open for business with perhaps some restrictions. The wild fires and loss of life in Lahaina are indeed tragic, but I don't believe that the rest of the island is to be avoided and will still need tourist infrastructure such as rental cars, etc. Even if they did need to reduce the number of rentals cars on Maui, I'd expect that they might redistribute them within the state, e.g. Ohua.

[princeton123211]

2 hours ago, CruiserBruce said:

Its Kahalui.

It's actually Kahului. 

 

3 hours ago, mousefan73 said:

Interesting as if our boat docks on October 10th I believe in Kahlauni, I have a car rental booked at that hotel down the street. I hope I have a car.. unless a local needs it. but I hope it's just not shipped off..

One area of the island is a disaster area and even in West Maui the only area that's really destroyed is Lahaina. The major resort areas of Kapalua and Kaanapali survived completely intact.

 

The loss of Lahaina breaks my heart-- so many happy memories there over the years and of course the loss of life-- but this narrative that Maui has been permanently hobbled is nonsense. 

 

Pretty much all areas aside from West Maui currently are back to business as usual. Based on what the resorts are saying, and how they are enforcing their cancellation policies, it appears that Kaanapali and Kapalua will be back to pretty much business as usual by September or October at the latest. 

 

You could show up right now at the car rental counter and have no issue getting a car. 

 

43 minutes ago, DCwom said:

Even if they did need to reduce the number of rentals cars on Maui, I'd expect that they might redistribute them within the state, e.g. Ohua.

Its Oahu. In terms of the rental car situation I don't know how we've become so alarmist. No natural disaster could have nearly the impact on the rental car market and really the resort occupancy than the Covid shut downs did. I remember landing on the island in Oct of 2020 and it was just parked rental cars as far as the eye could see in the former sugar cane fields around the airport. 

 

Again-- this is heartbreakingly tragic especially with the loss of life-- but this is a blip on the radar for tourism compared to the heavy toll the months of shutdown that Covid inflicted. I think this is why you have the Governor already calling for tourists to come back to the other parts of the island as quickly as possible.

 

Their renewed tourism dollars are as necessary to rebuild and sustain as FEMA, our donations, federal assistance etc. 

[dockman]

The kihei and wailea and kapalua and a few other areas of maui are open and want biz...kaanapali could be a challenge as those hotels like royal lahaina are full of workers and displaced people possibly for a couple of yearss so maybe not many toursits there....several airlines like united have cut way back on maui flights for few months as demand is down...Lahaina will be off limits for a long time i suspect as they say the cleanup of all the toxic chemicals the fire created will take a lot of specialized work...lot of old lead pipes melted into the ground and lot of asbestos in those old buildings among a few...

There will be cars available as they certainly will not get rid of all of them...but they simply have too many cars for the current and foreseeable demand they say.  There will also likely be an army of construction workers eventually who will need all kinds of trucks/cars/equiptment as well as housing etc.  My understanding is they want to house these people probably in kaanapali near as possible to the work site of lahaina...my opinion is overall tourist probably better off in kihei wailea areas.

 

It is a long and tough road ahead...Maui does need and want tourists to come back, they are just asking that the toursists pretty much stay out of the way in lahaina as there is much work to be done there and a lot of it will be off limits for a long time.

[KeepCalmBearOn]

45 minutes ago, dockman said:

There will be cars available as they certainly will not get rid of all of them...but they simply have too many cars for the current and foreseeable demand they say. 

 

Maui arrivals were over 7,000 a day before the fires. I expect them to be back above 5,000 by the end of October, maybe higher. Right now the arrivals are more than 2,000 a day. The word has gone out that Maui is open. I don't expect the car rental companies to make any decisions on inventory any time soon and the airlines will keep arriving.

[dockman]

1 minute ago, scottca075 said:

 

Maui arrivals were over 7,000 a day before the fires. I expect them to be back above 5,000 by the end of October, maybe higher. Right now the arrivals are more than 2,000 a day. The word has gone out that Maui is open. I don't expect the car rental companies to make any decisions on inventory any time soon and the airlines will keep arriving.

lets hope so as maui needs biz...

https://www.travelweekly.com/Travel-News/Airline-News/United-cuts-Maui-flying

[doyleb]

We are booked on the Royal Princess, currently scheduled to stop in Lahaina on 4 October.  Obviously that needs to change and I just checked the port schedule for Kahului and there's no cruise ship in port that day.  If indeed the balance of Maui is looking for tourists and the income they provide, I hope our ship can move there so we can help fellow US citizens with their livelihood, without impacting (or minimizing impact) on the recovery efforts.

[azbirdmom]

On 8/25/2023 at 11:49 AM, dockman said:

lets hope so as maui needs biz...

https://www.travelweekly.com/Travel-News/Airline-News/United-cuts-Maui-flying

 

Thank you for that.  We had originally been scheduled to stay in Puamana in Lahaina next month and had outbound flights on United (LAX connection) and return (nonstop) on Southwest.  While we were waiting for the property management company to cancel us, we got a notice from United changing us to flights with more than 4 hours between connections via SFO.  All of those original reservations have now been cancelled and refunds received.

 

Last week we decided to rebook to stay in Kihei next month (hopefully helping the local economy).  United's schedule doesn't work for us at all at the moment and I could see that our only option would still have been SFO with long connection times.  We ended up booking a nonstop flight on American and also a nonstop back on Southwest.  Well a couple days later we get a notice that Southwest cancelled our flight and put us on a connection through HNL.  In looking at alternatives many of the Southwest options from OGG have disappeared now too.  Fingers crossed that American keeps our flight but I realize we will be lucky if they do.

 

I know that they really want to revive tourism on other parts of the island but that won't happen if people can't get there.  I also know that airlines can't make money flying with empty seats.  Just a horrible situation all around....

[KeepCalmBearOn]

1 hour ago, azbirdmom said:

Well a couple days later we get a notice that Southwest cancelled our flight and put us on a connection through HNL.  In looking at alternatives many of the Southwest options from OGG have disappeared now too.

 

I wouldn't book SWA for anything right now.... not even for a free flight. Stick with Hawaiian and American. Look at OGG to LAX, then figure out LAX to PHX separately.

[azbirdmom]

13 minutes ago, scottca075 said:

 

I wouldn't book SWA for anything right now.... not even for a free flight. Stick with Hawaiian and American. Look at OGG to LAX, then figure out LAX to PHX separately.

 

Why not?  We flew SWA from OGG - PHX in late May and it actually wasn't bad - with early boarding that allowed us to snag exit aisle seats.  We have pretty much flown United exclusively for years so I had been apprehensive.  SWA and Hawaiian are the only airlines that allow us to get back the same day, all other flights are red-eyes.  Our seats on SWA are fully refundable so I will continue to watch fares on Hawaiian and will change if necessary, just curious why you're recommending against SWA.

[KeepCalmBearOn]

33 minutes ago, azbirdmom said:

Why not?

 

Have you not seen the issues at SWA in the last 10 months? They were notoriously unreliable before and the last 10 months have been a disaster.

 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/airline-news/2023/01/26/southwest-american-airlines-loss/11128845002/

https://www.khou.com/article/travel/southwest-flight-issues-2023/285-346a2da3-5a60-429a-8fd1-ddde63ed6047

 

I would not risk them.

 

Beyond that, their response in the wake of their disasters was disgracefully inadequate,

[mooline]

Good news as of today: NCL has announced Pride of America's return to Maui: