Hawaii is set to introduce a $25 (about €23) “climate fee” on tourists, if proposals by Governor Josh Green go through.
Payable on check-in at hotels and holiday rentals, the tax is “a very small price to pay to preserve paradise”, said the Governor, speaking to the Wall Street Journal. Expected to bring in around $68 million (€63m) per year, the climate fee will go towards protecting Aloha State’s beaches and anti wildfire measures, as well as disaster insurance for locals.
Reeling from influx and disaster
The Pacific island is still reeling from 2023’s 2,000-acre inferno at Lahaina. The deadliest American wildfire in more than a century caused at least 99 fatalities and forced hundreds of families from their homes, with over 2,000 structures destroyed.
Hawaii saw a huge influx of visitors during Covid-19, when it allowed all vaccinated Americans to visit without pre-flight testing or quarantine conditions. The resulting congestion, worker and water shortages, and poor behaviour from some tourists, led leaders and residents in Maui to plead with authorities to help limit or better manage tourism.
“We’re asking for just a pause, if you want to use that term,” Mayor Mike Victorino said at the time. “We don’t have the authority to say ‘stop,’ but we’re asking the powers that be to help us in this sense.”
Since then, tensions have grown between those who want to reconsider the islands’ relationship with tourism and those who depend on it and say it has suffered after the fire. According to Hawaii Tourism Authority estimates, the state has lost $9 million tourism dollars per day since the fire. It has poured $2.6 million into a Marketing Recovery Plan for Maui, to boost travel demand.
Prices going up
A previous bill to require tourists over 16 years of age to buy a $50, one-year “environmental license” to access Hawaii’s leisure sites failed to pass, but it was largely the mechanics of getting visitors to pay, rather than the principles behind the bill that were seen to be the problem with getting the legislation through.
Last year the island of just 1.4 million residents received 9.5 million visitors and more local councils have been calling for tourism impact taxes. Indeed, the proposed tourist climate fee joins other Hawaiian increases in prices aimed at managing demand and protecting resources. The cost of airport shuttle buses has gone up and prices have doubled for some well-visited attractions and activities. Another bill to raise hotel taxes is in development.
