Hawaii Stands Firm With Alaska, New York, and Maine to Reclaim Housing and Ecosystems from Mass Tourism: Is Vacationing in the US About to Change Forever?

Written By: Shreya Saha

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July 21, 2026 4:00 PM

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Hawaii Stands Firm With Alaska, New York, and Maine to Reclaim Housing and Ecosystems from Mass Tourism as destinations across the United States address growing pressure on communities and natural resources. Furthermore, Hawaii stands firm with Alaska, New York, and Maine by exploring strategies to reclaim housing availability and protect ecosystems from the impacts of mass tourism. These regions are strengthening efforts to balance visitor demand with local needs. Moreover, Hawaii, Alaska, New York, and Maine are focusing on sustainable tourism management, environmental protection, and community resilience. The push to reclaim housing and ecosystems reflects a broader response to rising tourism challenges. Therefore, these destinations are developing new approaches that preserve natural landscapes, support residents, and maintain long-term tourism value. This shift highlights how mass tourism management is becoming a key priority for future travel planning and destination sustainability across America.

Hawaii: Environmental Taxation and Fiscal Restructuring

Hawaii has historically maintained a highly centralized consumption-tax structure to finance public infrastructure and municipal operations. The General Excise Tax—levied at a base rate of 4.0% with local county surcharges bringing the effective rate to 4.5%—has served as the principal source of public revenue, supplying approximately half of the state general fund and more than half of the general fund receipts in the counties of Maui, Hawaii, and Kauai.

However, the intensive ecological pressures of hosting upward of 10 million annual visitors prompted state policymakers to seek dedicated funding mechanisms that shift the financial burden of environmental preservation from residents to transient consumers. Following the devastating August 2023 wildfires on Maui and the recommendations of the Climate Advisory Team established in 2024, the state sought to leverage the Transient Accommodations Tax as an ecological funding source.

On May 27, 2025, Governor Josh Green signed into law Act 96 (Senate Bill 1396), establishing the nation’s first-ever climate impact fee, colloquially designated as the Green Fee. Effective January 1, 2026, Act 96 increased the state Transient Accommodations Tax rate by 0.75 percentage points, raising the total rate from 10.25% to 11.00%.

To ensure competitive equity and address a segment of the visitor economy that historically escaped local Transient Accommodations Tax liabilities, the law expanded the tax to encompass the gross rental proceeds of cruise ship fares paid by transients for cabins on ships docking in state ports. Under this statutory framework, cruise operators must pay the 11.00% Transient Accommodations Tax on a prorated basis, determined by the ratio of the vessel docking days in state ports to the total duration of the voyage.

To manage tax compliance, the state presumes all taxpayers use the cash basis of accounting unless accrual-basis status is proven to the Department of Taxation. For cash-basis taxpayers, any proceeds received on or after January 1, 2026, are subject to the 11.00% rate; for accrual-basis taxpayers, the 11.00% rate applies if the right to receive the income is fixed after that date under the statutory all events test.

The Department of Taxation initially estimated that the 0.75% tax increase and the cruise fare levy would generate 42 million dollars in Fiscal Year 2026 and 87 million dollars in Fiscal Year 2027, with long-term stabilized yields projected at 100 million dollars annually.

The Green Fee Advisory Council, led by Jeff Mikulina, was established to prioritize these funds and provide recommendations to the Governor and Legislature for inclusion in the state budget. The statutory framework requires these funds to be expended equally to advance projects in environmental stewardship, hazard mitigation, critical infrastructure hardening, and sustainable destination management.

In July 2026, the Division of Forestry and Wildlife under the Department of Land and Natural Resources initiated the first major disbursement of Green Fee revenues, releasing an 8 million dollar Request for Proposals under the Hoola Aina program for community-based projects in native ecosystem restoration, watershed protection, and climate resilience.

To prevent these revenues from being absorbed into the general fund and to maintain public trust, the Hawaii Legislature introduced HB 1949, which establishes the Green Fee Transparency and Accountability Program and an interactive, public-facing Green Fee Resiliency Impact Dashboard administered by the Hawaii Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Commission.

Additionally, HB 2602 established a matching grant program within the Department of Business, Economic Development, and Tourism to encourage private-sector capital investments in sustainable visitor-serving infrastructure.

Alaska: Contractual Versus Codified Maritime Volume Caps

The City and Borough of Juneau has historically managed a highly concentrated cruise tourism sector, prompting local officials to transition from voluntary, negotiated agreements to strict, codified capacity controls. Under the direction of Visitor Industry Director Alexandra Pierce and based on the 2021 recommendations of the municipal Visitor Industry Task Force, the City and Borough of Juneau negotiated a bilateral Memorandum of Agreement with the Cruise Lines International Association in Alaska to establish hard caps on daily passenger arrivals.

On May 31, 2024, the City and Borough of Juneau and major cruise lines executed a Memorandum of Agreement designed to manage visitor volume starting in the 2026 Alaska cruise season. The agreement establishes daily capacity limits based on available lower berths, which represents double-occupancy capacity:

• Weekday Capacity (Sunday through Friday): Maximum of 16,000 available lower berths per day.
• Weekend Capacity (Saturday): Maximum of 12,000 available lower berths.

The agreement also commits the cruise industry to annual scheduling reviews, joint efforts to eliminate hot berthing—the practice of scheduling multiple ships sequentially at a single dock on the same day, which frequently drives daily arrivals over the 16,000 threshold—and support for shore power and dock electrification projects to mitigate shoreside emissions.

The limits in the 2024 Memorandum of Agreement represent a compromise between local business interests and residents advocating for more restrictive controls. This tension led local organizer Karla Hart to successfully place Proposition 2, known as Ship-Free Saturdays, on the ballot for the October 1, 2024 municipal election.

The proposition proposed a total ban on any cruise ship with a capacity of 250 or more passengers on Saturdays and the Fourth of July, aiming to give residents a consistent day of rest and environmental recovery.

Opponents argued the ban would cause an estimated 30 million dollar reduction in local business spending and a 3.7 million dollar loss in municipal revenues, potentially leading to increased resident taxes and cuts to essential services. On October 1, 2024, Juneau voters rejected Proposition 2 by a vote of 6,575 opposed to 4,196 in favor.

Following the defeat of the Saturday ban, civic mobilization shifted toward codifying the negotiated lower berth limits to prevent future escalation. In April 2025, Karla Hart and a petitioning committee filed an initiative titled Cruise Ship Limits. The proposed initiative seeks to amend Title 20 of the municipal code by creating Chapter 20.50, which would write the 2024 Memorandum of Agreement limits directly into local law.

To qualify for the ballot, organizers were required to gather a minimum of 2,720 valid signatures, representing 25% of the 10,880 votes cast in the 2024 municipal election, by May 19, 2025.

This statutory codification effort has faced substantial pushback from maritime operators, such as Allen Marine Inc., who argue that the proposed permitting structure is overly vague, unconstitutionally delegates regulatory authority to the City Manager, and violates the federal Dormant Commerce Clause and maritime laws.

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New York: Supply-Side Digital Gatekeeping for Housing Infrastructure

To address the conversion of permanent residential housing into de facto tourist lodging, New York City adopted Local Law 18, also known as the Short-Term Rental Registration Law, on January 9, 2022. The law went into effect on March 6, 2023, with the Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement beginning active enforcement on September 5, 2023.

Local Law 18 shifted the burden of compliance verification from municipal code enforcement officers directly onto short-term rental platforms and property owners. Under the law, all short-term rental hosts offering rentals of fewer than 30 consecutive days must register with the Office of Special Enforcement and obtain a unique registration number.

The registration criteria are strictly designed to eliminate the commercialization of residential housing:

• Permanent Occupancy: The registering host must be a natural person who is the permanent, primary occupant of the housing unit.
• Entire-Unit Ban: Hosts are strictly prohibited from renting out an entire apartment or home for short-term stays; the host must remain present in the unit for the duration of the guest stay.
• Guest Limits: Short-term rentals are capped at a maximum of two paying guests or boarders.
• Physical Exit Access: Guests must have unrestricted access to all parts of the dwelling unit, including all mandatory fire and safety exits.
• Unpermitted Space Bans: Short-term occupancy is prohibited in non-residential or unpermitted spaces, such as attics, cellars, or garages.

Crucially, Local Law 18 establishes absolute bans on short-term rentals within vulnerable housing segments, including all New York City Housing Authority public housing developments, rent-controlled apartments, rent-stabilized units, and Single-Room Occupancy buildings.

A cornerstone of the enforcement architecture under Local Law 18 is the Prohibited Buildings List. Property owners, co-op boards, and condominium associations can notify the Office of Special Enforcement that short-term rentals are prohibited in their buildings under their leases, bylaws, or occupancy agreements. Once an address is added to this list, the Office of Special Enforcement is legally required to deny any host registration application associated with that building identification number. By 2025, the Prohibited Buildings List grew to encompass over 21,000 buildings across the city, representing more than 14,000 property owners.

To enforce these rules, the Office of Special Enforcement established a direct electronic verification portal. Online booking platforms—including Airbnb, VRBO, and Booking.com—are legally prohibited from processing transactions for any listing in New York City that does not possess a verified registration number in the Office of Special Enforcement database. Platforms face heavy statutory fines for facilitating bookings of unregistered properties.

In its Fiscal Year 2025 annual report, the Office of Special Enforcement announced that illegal short-term rental activity on major booking platforms had been almost entirely eradicated, with active listings dropping from an estimated 60,000 across platforms in 2018 to just 3,000 verified host registrations in 2025.

The Office of Special Enforcement rejected over 4,300 non-compliant applications, returning critical rental inventory to the long-term housing market. Streamlining administrative workflows reduced the average application review time to less than a week, with a 40% approval rate for applications processed during the fiscal year.

However, ongoing monitoring revealed that approximately 20% of registered hosts eventually reverted to illegal practices, such as advertising entire units or hosting more than two guests. In response, the Office of Special Enforcement issued warning notices of intent to revoke registrations to roughly 500 hosts. In 2025, the Office of Special Enforcement also filed its first major enforcement lawsuit under the new penalties of Local Law 18 to reclaim 10 illegally converted apartments in West Village, Manhattan.

Maine: Land Use Zoning and Constitutional Remands

The coastal town of Bar Harbor, Maine—with a year-round resident population of approximately 5,500—serves as a primary gateway to Acadia National Park. The exponential growth of the North Atlantic cruise industry brought over 300,000 annual cruise passengers directly into the town compact waterfront, causing severe pedestrian and vehicle congestion. Attempts by Bar Harbor to manage this influx have triggered intense local political conflict and a landmark federal constitutional challenge.

Dissatisfied with voluntary passenger caps established by the Town Council in 2008 and updated in late 2022 through Memoranda of Agreement with major cruise lines, local resident Charles Sidman led a petitioning committee to enact a mandatory, legally binding cap. On November 8, 2022, Bar Harbor voters approved the citizen-backed initiative by a vote of 1,780 (58.3%) to 1,273 (41.7%).

The initiative amended the town Land Use Ordinance, codifying Section 125-77(H). The ordinance mandates that no more than 1,000 persons, in the aggregate, may disembark on any single calendar day from any cruise ship—defined as a watercraft with 49 or more berths—and come to shore on, over, or across any property located within the Town of Bar Harbor.

The enforcement mechanism of Section 125-77(H) shifts the burden of compliance entirely onto private landowners and pier operators, such as BH Piers and Golden Anchor:

• Permit Requirement: Property owners must secure an annual disembarkation permit from the town Code Enforcement Officer.
• Counting and Auditing: Landowners must implement electronic counting systems to physically track every disembarking passenger and make these records accessible for audit by the Code Enforcement Officer.
• Fines and Penalties: Any property owner who permits disembarkations exceeding the 1,000-passenger daily limit is subject to a statutory minimum penalty of 100 dollars and a maximum of 5,000 dollars per excess passenger under the land-use enforcement statute of Maine.

Immediately following the passage of the ordinance, a coalition of local business owners, pier operators, and tender captains formed the Association to Preserve and Protect Local Livelihoods and filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine. The plaintiffs sought to block the ordinance, arguing that it violated the Supremacy Clause, the Due Process Clause, and the Dormant Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution. Charles Sidman successfully intervened as a co-defendant alongside the Town of Bar Harbor.

On March 1, 2024, following a three-day bench trial, U.S. District Judge Lance E. Walker ruled in favor of the town in almost all respects. The District Court held that the ordinance was a valid exercise of local home rule authority to protect resident welfare, except for a minor preemption issue concerning seafarer shore access.

To address this, Bar Harbor enacted Chapter 52 of the Town Code in June 2024, explicitly excluding vessel crew members covered under federal maritime security regulations from the 1,000-person limit. This regulatory adjustment effectively resolved the federal conflict, and on August 5, 2024, the town issued its first Notice of Violation to Golden Anchor for non-compliance.

The plaintiffs appealed the decision of the District Court to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. On August 11, 2025, the First Circuit issued a landmark decision that significantly altered the legal landscape. While the First Circuit affirmed the rejection of the due process and Coast Guard anchorage preemption claims of the plaintiffs, it vacated and remanded the Dormant Commerce Clause ruling.

The appellate court held that the District Court had failed to properly apply the Pike balancing test, which mandates that a local regulation burden on interstate commerce must not be clearly excessive in relation to its local benefits.

The First Circuit highlighted a critical discrepancy in the factual findings: while the ordinance was written to protect the entire downtown area, the evidence presented at trial only demonstrated severe congestion in the immediate waterfront corridor along West Street and lower Main Street, with minor, cumulative impacts elsewhere. The court ruled that deference to local voter judgment is limited when a municipal regulation disproportionately exports its economic burdens to out-of-state entities while failing to achieve its stated public safety benefits across the broader municipality.

In parallel with the federal appeal, the Bar Harbor Town Council sought a compromise to avoid protracted litigation and mitigate municipal financial liability. On August 27, 2024, the Town Council adopted Chapter 50 of the Municipal Code, a comprehensive Cruise Ship Reservation and Disembarkation Licensing framework. Chapter 50 was designed as a track two approach to replace the strict 1,000-passenger Land Use Ordinance limit with a contract- and licensing-based model.

The implementation of Chapter 50 was explicitly contingent on voters approving Article 4 at the November 5, 2024 Special Town Meeting, which proposed to repeal Section 125-77(H) of the Land Use Ordinance. Under the proposed Chapter 50 contracts negotiated with major cruise lines, the town would have established a daily cap of 3,200 passengers, a monthly cap ranging from 20,000 in summer to 55,000 in autumn, and a hard annual cap of 200,000 passengers. Crucially, Chapter 50 would have banned mega-ships with capacities exceeding 3,200 passengers entirely, guaranteed a minimum of 20 ship-free days during peak summer months, and secured signed legal releases from pier owners and cruise lines to end all active litigation.

Supporters of the strict 1,000-passenger limit launched a highly decentralized grassroots campaign to defeat the repeal. They argued that Chapter 50 would undo the democratic will of the 2022 vote and permanently lock the town into a high-volume licensing agreement. On November 5, 2024, Bar Harbor voters narrowly rejected the referendum, with 1,776 votes against the repeal opposed to 1,713 votes in favor. As a result of the vote, the strict 1,000-passenger cap remains in effect, and the legal challenge continues under the remand of the First Circuit.

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Following the vote, opponents of the referendum faced a complaint filed with the Maine Ethics Commission by resident Kristi Bond. The complaint alleged that various decentralized groups had failed to comply with state disclosure and registration rules for ballot question committees. However, after gathering preliminary information from participants such as Charles Sidman and Peter Scott—who organized a small group of residents to print signs and place newspaper advertisements—the Commission staff recommended no further action. The investigation confirmed that no individual or group met the 5,000 dollar contribution or spending threshold required to register as a formal ballot question committee under the laws of Maine.

Comparative Analysis of Policy Mechanisms and Municipal Trade-offs

The divergent regulatory mechanisms analyzed across these jurisdictions illustrate the strategic trade-offs U.S. destinations face when addressing overtourism. These policies rely on different legal authorities and target different sectors of the local economy.

Taxation Structures

The model established in Hawaii demonstrates that targeted environmental taxation can generate substantial public revenue to fund climate resilience and infrastructure protection. By integrating the Green Fee into the existing Transient Accommodations Tax and expanding it to cruise fares, administrative overhead is minimized while ensuring that visitors contribute directly to environmental conservation.

However, this consumption-tax model creates an inherent policy tension: conservation budgets remain structurally dependent on maintaining high visitor volumes. Any successful campaign to reduce absolute visitor numbers would directly compress the revenue available for environmental stewardship, highlighting a fundamental contradiction between fiscal dependency and volume reduction.

Local Home Rule Limits

The regulatory paths traced in Alaska and Maine demonstrate the legal boundaries of municipal home rule under the federal Commerce Clause. The dual-track approach in Juneau—balancing voluntary Memoranda of Agreement with grassroots initiatives to codify capacity limits—reflects a highly pragmatic effort to manage volume while minimizing the risk of constitutional litigation.

In contrast, the reliance in Bar Harbor on strict land-use zoning to impose a hard 1,000-passenger disembarkation limit has led to protracted legal battles. The remand of the Bar Harbor ordinance by the First Circuit emphasizes that local governments cannot easily restrict interstate commerce unless clear evidence is presented showing that local public safety benefits outweigh economic impacts on out-of-state commerce.

When a municipal regulation disproportionately exports its economic burdens to out-of-state entities while failing to achieve its stated public safety benefits across the broader municipality, its legal defensibility under the Pike balancing test is significantly weakened.

Supply-Side Digital Gatekeeping

The implementation of Local Law 18 in New York represents a highly efficient approach to supply-side overtourism management. By shifting the burden of compliance verification directly onto short-term rental platforms and establishing the Prohibited Buildings List, municipal enforcement costs have been successfully externalized.

This model has proven highly effective at correcting housing market imbalances, removing thousands of illegal listings, and protecting rent-regulated housing stock.

However, ongoing enforcement actions by the Office of Special Enforcement against registered hosts who eventually revert to illegal practices demonstrate that digital gatekeeping must still be paired with physical, on-the-ground municipal monitoring to prevent compliance evasion.

Ultimately, these four case studies show that American destinations are moving away from passive tourism promotion toward active, interventionist destination management. Whether through targeted environmental taxation, maritime capacity ceilings, or supply-side short-term housing restrictions, local governments are testing the legal, political, and operational boundaries of municipal authority to achieve a more sustainable balance between the visitor economy and local resident welfare.