O‘ahu in 1950: Visitors Could Once Enjoy Staying in Hawai‘i for 10 Dollars a Day

Finding affordable accommodations in the Islands for teachers and out-of-state students isn’t a new problem, it seems.

March 12, 2020

Don Wallace,

For 133 years HONOLULU Magazine has kept its readers and advertisers at the vanguard of fashion, insight and fun. Starting out as Paradise of the Pacific in 1888 with a commission from King Kalākaua, we’re the oldest continually publishing magazine west of the Mississippi—and our archives rock!

In the pre-jet-plane era of the ’50s, a “new low cost plan is devised for visitors in middle-income range,” writes Paradise of the Pacific. Hawai‘i Hosts, a local housing service, offers “accommodations in private homes, apartment homes, dormitories and small hotels.”

The story describes how student Marjorie Ernst stepped off a United Airlines plane and was greeted with lei by handsome John Tsukano, a veteran who got the idea for Hawai‘i Hosts from “the Youth Hostel movement when he was stationed in Europe.” Though the housing service started out with University of Hawai‘i summer sessions, the program soon morphed into something else, working with “the Pyle-Roman travel agency of Hollywood.”

The cost? Forty-four days for $469. Hawai‘i on $10 a day! Along with bus tours, hula shows and “authentic” lū‘au, those who come “find they attain a greater insight into the true living pattern of the Islands.” Airbnb, anyone?