Applications now accepted for Waikoloa affordable rentals

[TomK]

" Please try to understand the difference between not understanding a post because the person is so illiterate their post can't be understood and trying to divert the discussion in order to avoid answering questions. "

case rested

For whom?

[kalakoa]

Isn't it great that Rob upgraded the forum so that every thread can be the same crap?

[randomq]

Isn't it great that Rob upgraded the forum so that every thread can be the same crap?

Instructions to ChatGPT:

You are a cranky old British man on a local forum in Puna, Hawaii. You can't help but respond to trolls and think that logic will somehow stop them from trolling. If their posts contain typos or grammatical errors you will point them out and act as if their posts are incomprehensible, but only if errors do actually exist in them. Be very concise. Do not talk like ChatGPT, don't apologize or explain yourself.

I will feed you a series of other users posts, and you will respond as the cranky old man.

Here is the first one:

"Isn't it great that Rob upgraded the forum so that every thread can be the same crap?"

What an utter load of rubbish. If you can't contribute anything useful to a conversation, then it's best you keep your trap shut. Don't blame the forum for your own lack of imagination. -- ChatGPT TomK

[AaronM]

"but instead, he tries to divert the discussion into one about grammar."

LMAO .. ^^^  laments king of doing so  ^^^

Please try to understand the difference between not understanding a post because the person is so illiterate their post can't be understood and trying to divert the discussion in order to avoid answering questions.

There are no questions asked of me in this thread that I have not answered.  Unless it's a question from you TK and in that case, I don't care.

[TomK]

There are no questions asked of me in this thread that I have not answered.  Unless it's a question from you TK and in that case, I don't care.

Right. You have no argument. Even if I ask you a question, you won't answer it because you can't. Or do you? Why are you giving those that have to commute to the west side such a hard time here? You say they are masochists. Surely you can explain why you posted that, right?

[AaronM]

Salamat + Come on Aaron, Jump in the fya : )

And yeah already forwarded to my  amazing friends who sleep on the bus in order to make ends "meat" for dey famz.

The current state of tourism labor is untenable.  Expecting people to commute for several hours a day has a direct correlation to the fact that more native Hawaiians live outside of Hawaii than in it.

Hilton income for 2022 was $1.25B, a 206% increase over 2021.  Marriot income for 2022 was $21B, an increase of 49%.  Outrigger profits aren't as readily available but likely follow a similar trend.  Covid is over, the profits are back and it's time for an aggressive union to go to bat for their employees.

Ideally a General Strike is the way to go but that hasn't been that successful in America and I have no info regarding Hawaii's labor history.  Although I imagine big sugar had some problems maintaining a strong grip on the situation...

There has been some talk of dollars and cents but let's make those dollars make sense.  What would a living wage look like for North Kona?  More importantly, how could that be achieved?   Walang anuman.

[terracore]

"Covid is over, the profits are back and it's time for an aggressive union to go to bat for their employees."

Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. Before that happens the resorts will exhaust other strategies available to them like reducing maid service (this has been a trend for some time), coercing customers to tip more (already a trend), or importing foreign workers. If a combination of these strategies isn't successful, they will begrudgingly pay more, and thusly charge their customers more, which could ultimately put downward pressure on tourism.

The only data I can find shows that the Hilton Waikiki has about 3,000 rooms and 2,000 employees. Let's just call it .7 employees per room which is a reasonable estimate considering not all the rooms are occupied all the time. What's a living wage for a hotel worker? Let's say it's $30/hour. Then it will cost approximately $240 per night just to pay for the labor of keeping one hotel room operational. The building is old is probably a maintenance nightmare, I couldn't even hedge a guess what it would cost per room per night. Then of course you have leases, utilities, taxes, landscaping, insurance, and a million other expenses and before you know it adding $240 on top of all that. The property was kind of a dump when I stayed there, if they tried to get $1000/night there I can imagine that having some serious downward pressure on the amount of people that can afford Hawaii. Is $30/hour a living wage in Honolulu? Probably not. So make it $60 and add $480 to the cost of a hotel room. Ooops, don't forget health insurance, workers compensation insurance, employer share of FICA etc, so put labor cost at $600 per room per night.

I concede my figures don't have enough data points to be accurate, so no need to pick them apart. They are for illustration purposes only.

In your figure you list Hilton income at $1.25B. I think it's higher than that. But divide that by their number of employees (about 160,000) and you get they are making about $7,800 per employee. That's not a lot of wiggle room to remain profitable if one starts talking about jacking the wages up. Assuming they are full time employees, that means giving each one a raise of less than $4/hour would make them unprofitable.

[kalakoa]

Hotels are already experimenting with robot housekeepers. It's just a matter of time.

[Durian Fiend]

 That's not a lot of wiggle room to remain profitable if one starts talking about jacking the wages up.  Assuming they are full time employees, that means giving each one a raise of less than $4/hour would make them unprofitable.

Yup. The hotel industry tends to be volatile. Lower tier wages can only be raised so much.  Not enough to make your typical Kona real estate affordable for a couple pulling down those salaries.. 

As Johnny Watson would say, Abdul Jabbar couldn't reach those prices with a sky hook. 

Back to the new low income housing, one would expect there will be a huge demand for those units.  Looking forward to an update after the application deadline expires.

[AaronM]

I just couldn't get past the if prices rise, tourists will stay away malarkey.

Hawaii is an international attraction. C'mon now you gotta give her some respect, some esteem.

Hawaii doesn't need to pay for advertising even though we do anyway. It's places like Arkansas that need a robust tourism marketing department.

Besides if anyone balks, explain the concept of a living wage and that the resulting high quality of life for the workforce is an important part of the spirit of Aloha.
Or something like that.

Now is the time when management is beginning to see the ship getting back to an even keel. A strike now would be devastating.

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BTW, does that factoid about Hilton having 160,000 employees includes the employees of the franchise properties? Boasting about a huge number of employees is great, having employees that you don't pay is even better.

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Does anyone have a rough idea of what the odds of being accepted are?