Stay HawaiiHawaii vacation rentals

Stay Hawaii

Host Terms

Effective date: September 20, 2026

These Host Terms apply when you list a place on Stay Hawaii ("Stay Hawaii", "we", "us"). Stay Hawaii is a Hawaii only booking site where travelers book local hosts directly. The host tools you use behind it (calendar, messages, reports) are provided by Navi CoHost, run by the same team. The Navi CoHost Terms of Service cover those tools. Where the two documents disagree about Stay Hawaii, these Host Terms win. By creating a listing you agree to both.

1. How Stay Hawaii makes money

We want this to be plain, so here is all of it.

  • Your first listing is free. You get your own booking page, your own link, a QR card, a calendar that shows all your bookings together, and a spot on stayhawaii.app. No card needed.
  • Pro is $8 a month for each listing, and $5 a month for each listing past ten. Every listing after your first is a Pro listing. You can put your first listing on Pro too. Adding a listing never lowers your bill, so 5 listings are $32 a month, 10 are $72, 25 are $147, and 50 are $272. Pro adds the host tools: guest replies drafted for you, automatic messages, cleaner scheduling, price suggestions and money reports.
  • Guests pay a 5% Stay Hawaii fee. It is added on top of your price and shown to the guest before they pay. It is never taken out of your price. You set your price, and that is the amount the booking pays you.
  • Your own guests pay no fee. When a guest books through your own link, your QR card, or your own website, we do not add the 5%. That is true on every listing, free or Pro: you brought that guest, so there is nothing for us to charge for. See section 6 for what counts.
  • Guests who find you by browsing stayhawaii.app pay the 5%, on free and Pro listings alike.
  • Card processing is about 3%. Stripe keeps its usual processing fee out of each payment, the same as any card payment anywhere. That fee goes to them, not to us, and they set the exact rate.
  • No host commissions. We do not charge hosts a commission on bookings.

While Stay Hawaii is getting started we may not charge some of these fees. We will email you at least 30 days before any charge to you begins or any price changes. We never charge a card you have not given us.

2. Who can list

  • The place is in the State of Hawaii.
  • You own it, or you have the owner's permission to rent it out and to list it here.
  • It can legally be rented for short stays where it is. That is your responsibility, not ours. County rules differ on Oahu, Maui, Kauai and Hawaii Island, and they change.
  • You are at least 18.

3. Licence and tax numbers

Hawaii law requires every advertisement for a short stay rental, online included, to clearly show the Transient Accommodations Tax (TAT) registration number. Some counties also require the Tax Map Key (TMK) or the county registration or permit number.

  • You give us your TAT number and any county number your place needs, and we show them on your listing.
  • A listing needs its TAT number to appear on stayhawaii.app. Without one, your own booking link still works, but the listing stays off the public site.
  • The numbers you give us must be yours and current. We may check them against public records and may hide a listing if a number looks wrong, until it is fixed.
  • We do not confirm that your rental is legal, and showing your number is not approval from us.
  • You collect, report and pay your own General Excise and Transient Accommodations taxes and any county tax. We do not file or pay taxes for you.

4. Your listing

  • Keep it accurate: photos, beds, amenities, location, price, fees, house rules and cancellation policy.
  • Use only photos and words you have the right to use. When you import a listing from Airbnb, VRBO or another site, you confirm the content is yours to use.
  • You let us show your listing, photos and reviews on Stay Hawaii, in search engines, in our emails and on our social pages and ads, so we can bring you guests. You keep ownership. This permission ends when you remove the listing, apart from copies already printed or posted.
  • Reviews you import must be real reviews of your place. We may remove any that are not.

5. Bookings

  • The booking contract is between you and your guest. You are the host, we are the booking tool.
  • You choose Instant Book or booking requests. Answer a request within 24 hours or it expires.
  • Honor every confirmed booking. If you must cancel, tell the guest at once and refund them in full.
  • Keep your calendar right. Connect your Airbnb, VRBO and other calendars so dates taken elsewhere are blocked here. A double booking caused by a calendar you did not connect or keep current is yours to fix with the guest.
  • You set your own cancellation policy. It is shown to the guest before they pay and you must follow it.

6. Your guests and our guests

  • Your guest: someone who arrives on your booking page from your own link, your QR card, your own website, your Google listing or your social pages.
  • A Stay Hawaii guest: someone who finds your place by browsing or searching stayhawaii.app.
  • We decide which it is by how the guest arrived, and we do it in good faith. If you think we got one wrong, tell us and we will look at it.
  • A booking that starts on stayhawaii.app is completed on Stay Hawaii. Please do not move that guest to another way of paying to avoid the fee. What you and that guest do for future stays is up to the two of you.
  • Use a guest's contact details for their stay and for staying in touch in ways they would expect. Do not sell them or spam them. Privacy law applies to you too.

7. Getting paid

  • Guests pay through your own Stripe account. The money goes to you. Stay Hawaii never holds your funds.
  • Until payments are connected, your listing takes booking requests only. Connecting payments turns on Instant Book.
  • The 5% guest fee is separated at checkout and comes to us. Your payout is your price, less the card processing fee kept by Stripe.
  • Refunds come from you, under your own cancellation policy, back to the guest's original payment method. When a booking is refunded in full, we refund the guest our 5% as well. Stripe may keep its processing fee on a refund. That is their rule.
  • You are the seller on the guest's card statement. If a guest disputes a charge with their bank, the dispute is with you. We will give you the booking record and messages to help you answer it.

8. Pro billing

  • Pro is billed monthly to the card you give us, until you cancel. Cancel any time in your account. It ends at the close of the month you have paid for. We do not refund part months.
  • If Pro ends, your first listing stays live on the free plan. Other listings are paused, not deleted, until Pro is back on.
  • If a payment fails we will email you and try again before anything is paused.

9. What we do not promise

  • We do not promise bookings, a number of guests, or a place in search results.
  • We do not provide insurance, damage cover or a host guarantee. Carry your own short term rental insurance. Damage, deposits and house rule problems are between you and your guest.
  • We do not screen guests beyond what is shown to you at booking. You may ask a guest for photo ID at check in. Do not send copies of ID through Stay Hawaii.
  • Calendar feeds from other sites update on their schedule, not instantly. Check new bookings.

10. Fair treatment

Follow federal and Hawaii fair housing and anti-discrimination law. Do not refuse or treat a guest differently because of race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, age, marital or family status, or any other protected ground. Service animals are handled as the law requires.

11. Hiding or removing a listing

We may hide or remove a listing, or close an account, for a wrong or missing licence number, false or misleading content, fraud, repeated cancellations, a safety concern, abuse of guests or of our team, or breaking these terms. Where we can, we tell you first and give you the chance to fix it. You can leave any time. Bookings already confirmed must still be honored or refunded in full.

12. Our responsibility to you

Stay Hawaii is provided "as is". To the extent the law allows, our total liability to you for any claim is limited to the greater of what you paid us in the 12 months before the claim or $100. We are not liable for lost bookings, lost income or other indirect losses. You agree to cover us for claims that come from your property, your listing, your guests' stay, your taxes or your breaking the law or these terms.

13. Changes, and how to reach us

If we change these terms we post the new version here with a new date and email you. Changes to prices or fees get at least 30 days' notice. If a dispute comes up, email us first and give us 60 days to sort it out with you before going to court. Reach us through the contact page.

Booking a stay rather than hosting one? See the Guest Terms. Also see our Privacy Policy for how we handle your information.