Fake Vacation Rental Listings: How to Protect Your Hawaii Trip— Ep 143

Fake Vacation Rental Listings: How to Protect Your Hawaii Trip

Verification steps and regulatory context current as of recording. Hawaii's short-term rental laws are actively changing island by island — verify current rules and always check GET/TAT numbers directly before booking.

Who this episode is for: Anyone booking a Hawaii vacation rental, especially larger multi-generational bookings, who wants to avoid fake listings and scam activity.

What you'll learn: How Hawaii vacation rental scams typically work, why the current legal confusion around short-term rental rules makes it easier for scammers to hide, how to verify a listing's GET and TAT numbers, and other red flags to watch for.

Places discussed:

• Maui (phasing out thousands of rentals)
• Oahu (limiting rentals to resort zoning or grandfathered permits)
• Kauai (rentals allowed only in specific visitor destination areas)
• Big Island (new registration system rolled out this past July)

Activities discussed:

• Booking a vacation rental
• Verifying a rental's legal registration
• Booking through Vrbo vs. Airbnb vs. hotels/resorts

Marcie's recommendations:

• Hawaii state officials have issued a recent warning that fake vacation rental listing scams are increasing, and Hawaii already has one of the highest rental scam rates per capita in the country
• Scammers commonly take a real listing's photos and repost them elsewhere — social media, a fake website, or even a legitimate platform at a lower price to create urgency
• Current confusion around changing short-term rental laws across all four islands makes it easier for scam listings to blend in, even for well-intentioned travelers
• Every legal Hawaii vacation rental should have both a GET number and a TAT number
• Verify these directly at portal.ehawaii.gov → Business → Tax Services → Tax License Search, rather than trying to check island-by-island systems separately
• Red flag: being asked to pay outside the official booking platform (wire transfer, gift card, app) due to a supposed website issue
• Red flag: a price dramatically lower than comparable nearby listings
• Consider a reverse image search on listing photos to check whether they appear elsewhere under a different property or owner name
• Never book a Hawaii vacation rental through Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace — there's no regulation or protection there
• Marcie's personal preference has shifted toward hotels and resorts, less about specific rental problems and more about avoiding pre-trip coordination logistics (check-in, keys, etc.)
• Vrbo has generally worked well for Marcie's multi-generational family trips; Airbnb has been a more negative personal experience, including issues with their affiliate program

Related Hawaii Travel Made Easy episodes: 

• Where to Stay in Hawaii: Resort vs Condo vs Hotel vs Vacation Rental Guide— Ep 38
• Resort vs Vacation Rental: The 5-Minute Decision Guide That Could Save You Thousands— Ep 64
• Hawaii Rental Cars in 2026: What's Changed (Plus My Turo Experiment)

Related articles: 

• How to Actually Plan a Hawaii Vacation (Without Losing Your Mind)
• Hawaii Is Shutting Down Vacation Rentals in 2026 (Here’s What That Means For Your Trip)

Additional resources:

• Hawaii Travel Consultation (60 min/$149, 90 min/$199)
• Hawaii Itinerary Review ($50)
• Hawaii Travel with Kids Facebook group

Verify a listing:

• Hawaii Tax License Search → Business → Tax Services → Tax License Search

About Your Host: Marcie Cheung is a Certified Hawaii Destination Expert who has visited Hawaii 40+ times and spent 20+ years as a professional hula dancer. Through Hawaii Travel with Kids, she helps families plan authentic, affordable Hawaii vacations that respect local culture while creating unforgettable memories.

Learn more at hawaiitravelwithkids.com

Connect: @hawaiitravelwithkids on Instagram | Book a Consultation

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Transcript

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My uncle told me about a neighbor of his who got scammed out of $40,000 booking a vacation rental for a family trip. $40,000 for a house that was never actually theirs to rent. And the more I've talked to people about this, the more I think it's happening a lot with exactly that kind of trip, a big multigenerational family gathering where somebody, usually a parent or a grandparent, is trying to book one house big enough for everybody. I wanna tell you about something that happened to us too so you know this isn't just a story I heard secondhand. We had a rental in Spain cancel on us when we were already on our way there, not months ahead of time, while we were mid-trip. It was because there was an event, and they realized they could re-list it at a higher price. And I can tell you firsthand, it sucked. You're standing in an airport doing math about where your family's gonna sleep tonight instead of enjoying your trip. So today, I wanna talk about fake and shady vacation rental listings here in Hawaii specifically because it's a real current problem, and I don't think people realize how confusing the whole vacation rental situation has gotten, which makes it easier for scammers to hide Aloha and welcome back to Hawaii Travel Made Easy. I'm your host, Marcie Cheung, and today we're talking about the fake rental scams in Hawaii. This isn't old news. Hawaii state officials put out a warning about this just recently, saying scam activity around fake vacation rental listings is increasing, and Hawaii already has one of the highest rates of rental scams per capita in the country. The way it typically works is that scammers take a real listing, photos and all, and repost it somewhere else, sometimes on social media, sometimes on a fake website, and sometimes even on a legitimate booking platform at a lower price to get you to bite fast. And here's the part I think matters most for Hawaii specifically. All the confusion around the short-term rental laws changing right now is basically a gift to these scammers. You've got Maui phasing out thousands of rentals, Oahu limiting things to resort zoning or a grandfathered permit, Kauai only allowing rentals in specific visitor destination areas, and the Big Island rolling out a brand-new registration system just this past July. Even people trying to do this the right way get lost in it, and when travelers are already confused about what's legal, they're a lot less likely to notice something's off about a listing So this comes up a lot in my consultations. I've had clients who come in saying they want to book an Airbnb, and they're confused about whether that's even allowed anymore or where. I've had people email me listings directly asking me to just look at it and tell them if it's legit because they can't tell on their own. And I'm in a lot of Hawaii travel Facebook groups since it's basically part of my job, and I see this play out almost every week. Someone posts asking if a rental looks legitimate before they book, or someone posts about a great deal they found and comments immediately fill up with people asking if it's a scam. I've also seen people share that their rental got canceled on them right as they were traveling, which like I said, I know exactly how that feels. And one that really stuck with me, hosts telling guests to say they're cousins or family if anyone asks, so the neighbors don't realize they're paying tourists in what's actually an illegal rental. So every legal vacation rental in Hawaii is supposed to have a GET number and a TAT number, and I already tell people to check for those. What I didn't realize until I looked at this more is that there's actually one place to verify them all instead of hunting down island by island. You're gonna wanna go to portal.ehawaii.gov, then you click into business, then tax services, and there's a tax license search right there that takes you to the state's actual lookup tool. That's a lot easier than what I've been doing, which is trying to track down each island's own system separately. So I'm gonna drop these instructions down in the show notes. Beyond that, the basics still matter. If someone's asking you to pay outside the actual booking platform through like a wire transfer, a gift card, or some app because there's supposedly a problem with the website, that's a real red flag. If the price is dramatically lower than every comparable listing nearby, that's worth a second look too. And if you've got the time, a reverse image search on the listing photos can tell you if those same pictures are floating around attached to a different property or a different owner's name somewhere else. I haven't gotten that far myself, but if you've got a few extra minutes before booking, it's a reasonable thing to try. I'm just gonna tell you where I land on this personally. I mostly book hotels and resorts these days, and it's not really about anything going wrong with the rental specifically. It's that I just don't want a list of chores to handle before we leave, checking in with an owner, coordinating a key, like all of that. I'm on vacation. I don't want extra responsibility waiting for me at the front end of my trip. We've used Vrbo for multi-gen trips when my mother-in-law is booking condos big enough for everyone, and that's generally been fine aside from one owner who accused us of stealing towels, which was not true and it was just annoying to deal with. Airbnb, on the other hand, has been a hot mess for me. We've been burned by them a few times, and years ago, their affiliate program got pretty shady. They still owe me money from referring their properties that I've never been paid for. That's not a scam story exactly, it's just my own experience with them as a company, which is part of why I don't reach for them anymore And I wanna be really clear about one thing. I would never book off of Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace for a Hawaii vacation rental. There's no regulation there, no protection, and nothing stands between you and whoever posted the ad. I've written the full breakdown of what's actually happening with Hawaii's vacation rental laws on the blog, along with a step-by-step planning guide. So I'll link both of those in the show notes. Between the legal confusion right now and scammers actively taking advantage of it, this is one of those areas where a few extra minutes of checking before you pay a deposit can save your entire trip. If you're staring at a listing right now and just want somebody to tell you whether it's legit before you send a deposit, that's a quick, useful thing to bring into a consultation, 60 minutes for $149 or 90 minutes for $199. You can book that at hawaiitravelwithkids.com under Hawaii Travel Consultant. And once you've actually got your stay locked in and you're building out the rest of your trip, that's usually where the itinerary audit earns its keep, $50 for a full second look at hawaiitravelwithkids.com under Hawaii Itinerary Review. If you just wanna see what other people are running into with this in real time, that's the Hawaii Travel With Kids Facebook group. Half of what I know about how common this is comes straight from watching that group. And everything else I trust and actually recommend, tools, guides, partners, all of it, lives at one spot at hawaiitravelwithkids.com under Hawaii Resources. Thank you so much for listening today, and I'll see you next time. Aloha.