I had heard a lot about AirBnb, the service where people rent out their homes and condominiums but had never actually had the chance to try it. After we had purchased our frequent flier tickets on sale, it was time to find some hotels. Unfortunately I had drained all of my Starwood Points staying at the Sheraton Maui resort on a previous trip.

Trip report:
United Airlines had a flash sale and I ended up going to Maui
My first experience with AirBnb where Marco Polo is forbidden

I didn’t have any other points of substance and wasn’t willing to pay at least $400 a night for a standard room so I started sifting through pages and pages of listing on AirBnb. I was initially looking all over Lahaina as that was the only place I had ever stayed.

I really wasn’t finding anything that I liked until I came upon a listing in Kihei. I wasn’t familiar with the area and sent a message to the host. He described Kihei as “Kihei is a more local type of Hawaii”.

The more that I research about this area, the more I became convinced that this would be the perfect combination of less commercialization than Lahaina.

We landed at 9 pm and picked up our car from Budget Rental where we paid $225 for an 8 day rental thanks to AutoSlash.com. AutoSlash took our original reservation of $325 and found discount after discount until we had saved $100 additional dollars.

We drove to Kihei which took about 40 minutes. I had called the property manager ahead of time and they arranged to have the keys on the counter for us since we were coming in so late.

We pulled up with plenty of parking and walked up the stairs to our condominium. On the first floor was a gorgeous kitchen and family area, bathroom, and the kids room with two single beds. Upstairs were too large chairs that pulled out to beds and a master bedroom complete with king bed, TV mounted on the wall and bathroom.

Our family has 5 people in it which makes a normal hotel room for 4 a tight squeeze and this place was offering lots of space to sprawl out. There were water cooler air conditioners in the bedroom on the first floor with the two singles as well as in the master bedroom.

There also a communal pool and charcoal BBQ area.

This was my favorite picture of all. “Running, jumping, screaming and other boisterous conduct are not permitted including games such as Marco Polo.”

My kids simply couldn’t understand it. Marco Polo is one of their favorite games. We started to postulate what games would be allowed. Marco Polio? Marco Rubio? Sharks and Minnows?

Though it was hard, we made sure to abide by the rules so as not to cause any disturbances with boisterous conduct.

We stayed at this condominium for six days and really enjoyed it. It did get quite warm during the daytime but other than that, we loved having multiple showers and being really close to the beaches.

Our first experience with AirBnb was a success.