Airbnb Agrees To Drop Illegal Kauai Vacation Rentals

Airbnb will no longer host listings for illegal Kauai vacation rentals, following a landmark agreement between the travel platform and Kauai County.

Airbnb is now the second short-term rental platform to agree to remove all Kauai listings without a valid Tax Map Key from its inventory of properties. The county forged a similar agreement last week with Expedia Group, the parent company of the popular short-term rental platform Vrbo.

Kauai law allows short-term rentals to operate in designated Visitor Destination Areas, which includes Princeville and parts of Kapaa and Poipu.

The new agreements with Airbnb and Vrbo will make it easier for the county to crack down on short-term rental operators outside of these designated areas by requiring all rental properties to provide a government-issued Tax Map Key number in order to join the site as a mechanism to prove that they are a legal, county-permitted property. The TMK number will be published on the property listing.

Airbnb has also agreed to educate hosts on its platform about the county’s short-term rental laws and provide the county with a monthly report about listings on the island.

County officials say the agreements mark the first time that a Hawaii government has entered into a cooperative agreement with a travel platform.

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