History

Hawaiian vacation rental owners have been a part of the Hawaiian tourism industry since the 1970s and have long  shared common interests such as a love of Hawaii and a desire to provide its guests with a wonderful Hawaiian experience.  The expansion of commerce over the internet has greatly increased the ability of many owners to manage their own properties.

Recently a few Hawaiian property managers and hotel owners began to argue that vacation property owners who rented their property directly to guests were creating unfair competition to their traditional vacation accommodation businesses.  To support their case, property managers and hotel owners made unsupported allegations that owners who rented directly to guests were not paying Hawaiian taxes and that they were not treating their guests properly.

In 2012 they began to lobby legislators who introduced multiple bills intended to curtail the right and ability of property owners to rent directly to guests.

These events were the catalyst for property owners to band together to form RBOAA as an organization intended to educate the public, property owners and the legislature about “rental by owner” and protect the rights of property owners.

In 2012 and every year since then, RBOAA has fought to counter proposed legislation introduced in the Hawaiian legislature to restrict the rights of property owners.  So far our efforts have been successful.  In 2015 our members provided over a thousand letters in testimony for and against legislation that would affect our abilities to manage our own property.

While we have, through a lot of volunteer work, been successful at the state level so far, we do not anticipate that property managers and hotel associations will put up their hands in defeat.  We expect that many of the future battles will continue to be fought at the state, county, and city level.