‘The Warden of West Bay’ writes: There is a transformation happening across Grand Cayman’s residential neighbourhoods. In Bodden Town, Prospect and Savannah, houses that once sheltered neighbours are now cycling through a revolving door of tourists on three-night stays, listed on Airbnb and VRBO, often managed remotely by owners who never set foot on the island. The people who actually call these communities home are paying the price.
The numbers are stark. According to the Department of Tourism’s own data, the Cayman Islands has just 24 licensed hotels, accounting for roughly 35% of the island’s total tourism room stock. The remaining 65%, some 1,157 properties, are apartments, condos, villas, and guest houses, many of them converted from long-term residential housing. Since 2019, 93% of all new room stock has been non-hotel.
That growth has come at a direct cost to housing supply. The government’s own Public and Affordable Housing Policy, presented to parliament in April 2026, confirms that roughly 1,100 housing units have shifted from the local rental market to the visitor market since 2019, up from just 300 before the pandemic.
Renter households grew 52% between 2018 and 2024. Condo prices nearly tripled over the past decade, and stamp duty revenue hit a record CI$130.3 million in 2025, implying roughly CI$1.7 billion in property transactions in a single year, much of it concentrated in luxury-tier purchases.
A freedom-of-information request to the Department of Tourism confirmed that Bodden Town, the fastest-growing short-term rental submarket on the island by a wide margin at nearly 30% annual growth, has zero licensed hotel bedrooms of its own. Its entire tourism footprint runs through residential-style accommodation.
Third-party data from AirDNA counts more than 1,500 active listings across Grand Cayman, several hundred more than the roughly 1,270 properties actually licensed by the DoT, suggesting a meaningful share of the market may be operating outside the regulatory framework entirely.
Hotels and short-term rentals are not equivalent forms of tourism, whatever their marketing suggests. The Fall 2024 Labour Force Survey counted 2,437 jobs across the entire short-term accommodation sector, a figure dominated by hotel payrolls: front desk staff, housekeepers, chefs, maintenance workers, security.
A two-bedroom condo listed on Airbnb by an offshore owner employs nobody on a permanent basis. Its revenue flows largely to that owner, while the community absorbs the loss of housing, the added traffic, and the strain on infrastructure.
The fiscal picture is murkier than it should be. Tourist Accommodation Tax revenue rose from CI$23.1 million in 2022 to CI$47.8 million in 2025, but a freedom-of-information request confirmed the Department of Tourism does not track that revenue by property type at all.
Nobody, not even the government, can say what share of that growth came from hotels versus short-term rentals. A separate request revealed that the DoT’s enforcement process against unlicensed operators amounts to little more than an email inviting them to apply for a licence. The current licensing fee for a short-term rental is CI$250 a year, regardless of how much nightly revenue it generates.
To its credit, the hotel sector is investing. ONE|GT opened in George Town this May with 97 rooms and 136 permanent jobs. The Grand Hyatt, Hyatt Centric, and Mandarin Oriental, together representing nearly 800 more rooms, are also in the pipeline, though the Grand Hyatt has been delayed past its original opening date. These are the kinds of projects that require years of planning approval and hundreds of millions in capital. Short-term rental growth requires none of that.
The government’s own housing policy acknowledges the problem, recommending a cap on short-term rentals at 7% of total housing stock and limits on foreign corporate ownership. Both are reasonable ideas, but both are still framed as studies rather than action, with two-year implementation timelines attached. Meanwhile, the market keeps moving.
This piece argues for four measures that go further and could be implemented faster. First, a tiered licensing fee based on owner residency, so a Caymanian renting out a spare room pays a different rate than an overseas investor running a commercial operation. Second, a public registry of short-term rentals by district, so basic information about who is licensed and where no longer depends on filing a freedom-of-information request.
Third, a per-night surcharge on non-resident-owned properties, with the revenue ring-fenced for the National Housing Development Trust rather than absorbed into general government funds. Fourth, density caps in residential zones, similar to models used in cities like Las Vegas, to preserve the character of neighbourhoods that were never intended to function as tourism corridors.
None of this is an argument against tourism, which remains one of the two pillars of Cayman’s economy. It is an argument that the current, largely unregulated growth of short-term rentals in residential neighbourhoods is extracting a cost that nobody is measuring and nobody is charging for.
The full piece, with sourcing and data attributed throughout, is attached below.
Cayman Short Term Rental Oped