I've been to Hawaii a half dozen times and don't spend anywhere near what some people are saying. My hotel in Waikiki comes in around $200/night all in. That said Hawaii does have winter! Right now there are a bunch of surprised people posting on Trip Advisor about Oahu because it's cool and rainy (which is typical and to be expected).

Well the last time I looked at Hawaii, before the last few months, was in 2017 and prices are definitely way up.

On Airbnb, there are hosts offering campers in SUVs for up to $300 a night. Before taxes and fees. That is on Maui and a few on Kauai.

They seem to be in prime locations though, close to beach and amenities. I don't know if they have a permanent parking spot? If you do sleep in a vehicle of some kind, is that allowed?

You'd have to have some kind of water and sewer hookups?

Yes, it's ridiculous how high the hotel rates are now. I live on Oahu and one of the partners in our firm needed to be on Kauai for a short 2 day trial. The cheapest hotels convenient to the courthouse were charging around $700 a night, which the client refused to pay. There were no reasonable Air B&B type rentals available either, so the partner had to stay with the client at his home.

My nephew recently got his private pilot's license and so my sister was thinking about them flying over to Maui for the weekend (they would only pay for the actual flight time, not the entire time they have the plane over the long weekend) - but the hotel rates were so expensive it was cheaper for the 3 of them (BIL, sister and nephew) to do a long weekend trip to San Francisco instead.

My DW and I were on Oahu from 11/3 to 11/10. The Travel Safe Hawaii website was a PITA trying to get them to accept pictures of our CDC vaccination cards. We had to get cleared again to get on the Southwest plane from Las Vegas. We came back home (PDX) by way of Oakland. Our DD and SIL moved from Maryland to Oahu last November. We had a great place to stay with them so no hotel bills. The best deal I got on a rental car was through Amtrak Guest Rewards which was about half what I had originally booked.
On the North Shore of Oahu are some cheaper motels that some of the surfers use. I don't know about the quality of those motels, but it has to be better than a camper/van.
I got 2000 AGR points for renting a car through them that I can use on a future Amtrak train trip.

Maybe one of the things which is happening is that Australia, NZ and SE Asia are closed (though you can get into Thailand by jumping through some hoops). Those are destinations which would compete with Hawaii in our winter for comparable weather and water views and activities

I think I might have spent $10k once for a trip to Australia but it was like 3 weeks and it included a $5k business class ticket and rental car.

Be careful if you do decide to do the camper/van rental. I know it's weird, but sleeping in your car in a public place is illegal in Hawaii. There are very few places you can camp in them legally, unless you are on someone's private property. Even in some of the few state camping spots, you are only allowed to sleep in a tent, not in a vehicle. The van rental places sort of gloss over this, but also assume no liability. Make sure you have confirmed places to spend your nights before you rent one.

Oh no chance I would pay over $200 a day for renting one.

Maybe I should actually post a trip report. I was there from Dec 2 to Dec 13 leaving from Long Beach California.

Actually had really nice weather, but I was lucky to dodge most of the rain.

My trip report is up. I'd recommend going to the Big Island and staying in Hilo, if you are cost-conscious. There was no issue with rental cars from Hilo airpot. I wouldn't say the prices were "reasonable" but they aren't much different than what is being charged around the US. Gas was about the same as in Los Angeles ($4.30 a gallon). Oahu was more expensive.

With the Saddle Road being upgraded, it is easy to visit the Volcanoes National Park and stay in Hilo.

Kona is more typically touristy, like Maui or Waikiki, not really my thing. If I want golf in a desert, I can drive two hours to the Coachella Valley although there is no turquoise ocean water. The Kona side really wasn't on my to-do list although I did drive over one day.

Still not on my to-do list.

Well now there are predictions of possibly 15k cases a day in January.

No changes in restrictions yet.

Decision not to book looks better now.

Virtually all of the COVID cases are in Honolulu (Oahu).

So far so good on Big Island.

But I deliberately went as soon as I could after Thanksgiving, expecting that there would be a post holiday surge.

Hawaii County is doing better than my zipcode in Long Beach.

Sadly, the COVID cases numbers are exploding on Kauai. With only 9 ICU beds on the entire island, it used to be disturbing if we had 10 cases. Now, we have had 18 deaths and there are more than 250 active (reported) cases. Apparently, the majority of cases are from residents who travel to the mainland, then return and cause family and community spread especially among the 30% who remain unvaccinated.

Well flights I've been tracking are trending down.

May be a drop in demand.

I heard predictions of 15,000 cases a day in January for the islands.

The cluster reports are always illuminating.

I've never really understood why people think that drinking and dining indoors with a lot of other people is safe during outbreaks. They still haven't invented a mask that you can eat through AFAIK.

https://www.scribd.com/document/5490...021#from_embed

Worth place to spend a pleasant vaccant
 

Bali

Airfares have come way down. Maybe the Omicron wave is making people not buy plane tickets.

Accommodation prices are still high but seem you can find a few where you end up spending $300 a night all-in between the hotel rates, taxes, resort fees and parking. That would be in Kauai and Waikiki.

That's despite $40-50 parking rates in some Waikiki hotels.

So it's a little better, might be possible to do a 10-day 2-island trip under $6000 compared to it approaching $8k or more when I was checking in November and December.

Would probably wait until the end of February or March.

Did someone say they are upgrading Saddle Road? We are staying near Hapuna beach and driving to VNP and may take that route. We have been on it before but 8years ago.

It's all paved now, scubachick18.

Still windy sections but not bad.

Lots of traffic from the Kona side.

I would recommend doing VNP from the Hilo side, or book a night in Volcano. The issue right now is that the lava flow comes and goes so no predictions as to what you might see when you visit. The viewing is MUCH BETTER late at night.

Case numbers are no where near 15000 a day but any need for hospital is a burden (that includes non COVID accidents, for example).

Thank you! Good info to know!

I might wait until things settle down in terms of COVID. Even international flights are getting turned around because of some lunatic on a plane now. Then there's the restrictions as to what you can do depending on where you're going. I'm not sure I understand what you mean by locals being hostile to tourists though .... where are you planning to go that this is a concern?