Kaanapali Beach Club fires 20
Kaanapali Beach Club on Maui laid off 20 workers Tuesday -- just four weeks after parent company Diamond Resorts International fired 34 employees when it closed its North Beach Grill restaurant.
The cuts, which come on the heels of mass layoffs at Maui Land & Pineapple Co. and Molokai Ranch, affect about 40 percent of a nearly 50-member housekeeping staff, and were due to the switchover to a full timeshare operation, which typically doesn't provide daily housekeeping services, according to a source familiar with the situation who asked not to be identified.
The company has limited services to towels and trash only and once-a-week midweek cleaning, though wholesale and direct-pay customers will continue to receive daily housekeeping services, the source said.
Management at the 413-room timeshare resort didn't return calls for comment.
"It's really a slap in the face, especially during negotiations," said Cade Watanabe, a spokesman of Unite Here Local 5, the hotel workers' union, which is in the midst of negotiating a new contract that covered about 240 bargaining unit employees at KBC prior to the layoffs.
The employees have been working under an extended agreement since the contract expired on Jan. 1.
"We view these layoffs as a direct attack on workers," he said.
On the flip side, timeshare operations have been helping to keep the industry viable in these tough economic times, said Carol Reimann, executive director of the Maui Hotel & Lodging Association. "Their occupancies aren't affected as drastically as the hotels with the current economic situation," she said.
While Maui has been hardest hit by a dramatic slowdown in the tourism industry due to rising fuel prices, declining consumer confidence and spending power, the layoffs were not due to the current economic situation, the source said.
Maui has seen a 22 percent drop in total visitor arrivals in June, and an 8.8 percent decline in travelers for the first half of the year. Maui County's unemployment rate rose to 4.4 percent last month from 3.1 percent a year earlier.
Maui Land & Pineapple last month laid off 274 employees while Molokai Ranch, which is part of Maui County, terminated more than 120 workers in March.
Diamond Resorts, a Las Vegas-based vacation ownership company, re-entered the Hawaii market in 2007 with the $700 million acquisition of rival Sunterra Corp.
