As far as Hawai’i law is concerned….if you have a massage studio or other location where clients come to you on a regular basis you are required to have a Massage Establishment License (MAE). It blows me away how many massage therapists don’t know this. You should have learned it in massage school, and it may have even been on your test!
Until 2013, massage establishments were supervised by the department of health. They had a set of requirements mostly geared towards sanitary practices, and they could inspect you at any time to make sure you were meeting these sanitary requirements.
In 2013 this responsiblity shifted to the DCCA and while the health department requirements were still law, it was a self certification process that was not verfied.
In 2018 the health department laws were repealed. In my opinion the massage establishment license became meaningless at this point. This is the reason the BIMN does not ask whether or not you have a MAE as to be a member. You are required to because it is a legal requirement…but we’re not verifying them for all our therapists.
As of 11/2022 the DCCA says they are working on their own set of sanitation rules and when those are released, BIMN may start verifying MAE licenses of its therapists.
The information described on this page is the best I can glean from various published documents and interactions I have had with the DCCA. If you have solid info to add, please share.
The massage establiished license costs about the same as your massage license. Its renewed every 2 years like your massage license with the same expiration date.
I have yet to see payment be held up for lack of a MAE. However, you do need to know that the legal requirement exists; and if a payment was ever denied for this reason, I would expect you to return any advances I had made to you for the denied sessions.
Easiest, as far as I am concerned, would be if you all had them. If you would like to apply, here is the application and instructions:
If you would like to see examples of the documents required with your application, these are from my own MAE application. which was granted in 2017:
Example Letter from Principal Massage Therapist
For your reference, here are the current laws governing Massage and Massage establishments (as of 11/2022). I also include the repealed health department rules. They no longer apply but could perhaps be an indicator of the types of sanitation rules the DCCA is currently working on. If you are building out your MAE from scratch, you may want to try to meet these requirements.
Repealed Health Department Rules
To check to see if there is anything new, and to do your own due diligence, you can go to the Massage page on the DCCA website.