If you had asked Amy and Scott Grant 20 years ago if they thought they would be running a vacation rental business on Kauai, they might have thought you were joking. At the time, the couple was running a catering business in Lake Tahoe after having met in culinary school.
Amy got her real estate license in the early 2000s on a tip from a friend when the area’s real estate market was thriving. She soon began managing vacation homes, too. The business grew by word of mouth, eventually becoming Great Vacation Retreats in 2005.
Not long after, one of their property owners asked them to handle their homes in Kauai, too. According to Amy, “the advice of some really smart people and some really good help on the island” made the new venture possible.
Leaving Tahoe for a vacation rental business in Kauai
Meanwhile, Scott had become a chef, but the job ultimately became a casualty of the 2007 recession. Faced with the unexpected layoff and dwindling restaurant job market, Amy asked, “What if we just moved to Hawaii instead?”
A month later, transferred the care of the Tahoe properties to another manager and traded Tahoe’s pines, snow and lakes for Kauai’s palm trees, warm breeze and turquoise shores.
In spite of (or perhaps because of) the recession, other Kauai property owners eagerly hired Great Vacation Retreats. Today, the vacation rental business now manages 80 condos and vacation homes, all within Kauai’s Visitor Designated Areas and served by a team of 14 employees plus local contractors.
Giving back to Kauai through vacation rentals
Amy and Scott quickly fell in love with the island community they and their 13-year-old daughter now call home, and they set out to make sure their business gave back to it as much as possible.
Before the pandemic, the company was hosting around 20,000 guests per year. Most fall into two categories: those who are on a once-in-a-lifetime trip, and those who visit several times a year. Those in the latter group often begin to feel like a part of the Kauai community, Amy said.
All of Great Vacation Retreats’ guests, whether frequent or one-time visitors, are more important to the Kauai community than they know. As is common of vacation rental guests everywhere, most prefer to frequent locally owned shops, restaurants, and other businesses. The Great Vacation Retreats team personalizes recommendations for them, always sure to support island businesses where the tourism revenue stays on Kauai.
But through simply choosing Great Vacation Retreats for their accommodations, guests also support local nonprofits and schools, beneficiaries of the vacation rental ecosystem that often go unnoticed. “We are very lucky to call Kauai home, or for many of our owners, a second home, and love to be able to give back so that our community can change the narrative of how vacation rentals can actually provide support for a community,” they write on their website.
Digging Deeper
Following a seminar by Maui’s Angie Leone about how she baked give-back programs into Coconut Condos’ operations, Amy and Scott decided to implement a similar structure.
Each month, the company focuses on one of four main charities: Nana’s House, Hale Opio, Women in Need, or the Kauai Independent Food Bank.
Nana’s House is a West Kauai family center that provides support and necessities for homeless and less fortunate community members. Hale Opio is an organization that empowers Kauai youth by providing residential and community programs for education, prevention, court diversion, and treatment.
For both organizations, Great Vacation Retreats frequently donates food, toiletries, and other critical supplies. Many of the company’s employees, partners, and even their family members have joined in the donation effort, too.
“We usually have a huge truckload of stuff to donate every month,” Amy said.
Women in Need is a local women’s shelter that empowers women who have been through domestic violence, homelessness, substance abuse, and incarceration. Great Vacation Retreats often provides the shelter with feminine products, food, and other necessities to help improve their quality of life.
The company also makes frequent non-perishable food donations to the Kauai Independent Food Bank, which distributes food to community members in need. Guests participate too by leaving their unopened nonperishable groceries in a donation bag left by Great Vacation Retreats.
The Grants chose these organizations in part because of the ability to support others through food, something they are particularly passionate about given their culinary backgrounds.
Similarly, vacation rentals themselves are a natural fit for organizations like Make a Wish Foundation and the Dream Foundation that provide dream vacations for terminally ill kids and adults. Great Vacation Retreats has opened their homes to patients for special, once-in-a-lifetime vacations in Kauai.
And as an extra special touch for guest welcome gifts, Amy purchases them from local school and team fundraisers as much as she can.
“‘Ohana’ is a word that gets thrown around a lot. It means ‘family’. We at Great Vacation Retreats often refer to ourselves, collectively, as the GVR Ohana. Our coworkers, our vendors, our everything in-between, are a part of our ohana,” their website reads. “That is also the way we see everyone in our small tight-knit community on Kauai which is why we pledge to allocate our efforts to give back and take care of our family in any way possible.”
Adapting to Covid-19
For now, most of their donations have diminished as business stopped in the wake of Covid-19. Pandemic travel shutdowns meant Great Vacation Retreats’ typical 90% occupancy during the season plummeted to just 3%, forcing them to lay off 10 of their 14 employees, along with several independent contractors.
Great Vacation Retreats is just one of thousands of Hawaii businesses forced into layoffs. In March, the tourism-dependent state’s unemployment rate was only 2.8%. Now, it’s at a staggering 22.5%, with Kauai County alone at almost 30%.
Hope may be on the horizon as the island slowly begins to reopen. Hawaii Governor Ige recently delayed the reopening of out-of-state travel to Hawaii without a 14-day quarantine requirement from August 1 to September 1, but inter-island travel was allowed to resume in mid June. Kauai and all other islands (except Oahu) have allowed legal vacation rentals to open to these travelers.
Though their business is not yet out of the woods, Amy remains optimistic about the return of tourism to Kauai. “It’s apparent to us here on this island that we’re quite valuable in getting the economy back together because of the amount of jobs we provide,” she said. “Being where we’re at, our location, and how special it is, I feel like we’ll get back to our normalcy of busy-ness pretty quickly once there’s a vaccine or things change.”
In the meantime, Great Vacation Retreats has continued their give-back initiatives as much as they can with business virtually nonexistent. They have used the downtime to deep clean their rentals, during which they collect items such as sheets and comforters to donate to their regular charities. They have also donated several food items that were being stored for use as guest welcome gifts to the food bank.
Looking ahead, Amy predicts that people will be much more interested in vacation rentals in the future. “A vacation rental is much easier for the Covid situation [for guests] than a crowded hotel, where you’ve got so many community areas where large groups of people would gather. They don’t do that in a vacation rental,” Amy said. “They’re making their own meals, but they’re still contributing to our taxes. They’ll still go out to eat. They’ll still go buy local products, so they’re still going to support the local community, but it’s a safer way to travel.”
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