Hawaii Hotel News: March 2005 Archives

OHANA East Hotel is $5 Million more inviting!

A superb choice for affordable accommodations in Waikiki! Offering all
newly renovated guest rooms and the swimming pool has been refinished with
deep blue and bright yellow mosaic tile fashioned into a blossoming hibiscus
at its bottom.

Just a few minute walk from the hotel takes you to Waikiki Beach or shopping
on Kalakaua Avenue. A few more minutes and you're at Kapiolani Park, the
Waikiki Zoo, the Waikiki Aquarium, or watching the surf from the lookout at
the foot of world famous Diamond Head. With a grocery store next door and
ample parking on site, you'll have everything you need to enjoy a vacation
in Waikiki.

Book the OHANA East Hotel here.

The Maui Marriott Resort and Ocean Club said it will cease hotel operations and reopen as a timeshare property by November.

The Lahaina resort was bought by Marriott Vacation Club International in 1999. The original plan was to convert the 720 hotel rooms into 311 villas.

Since that time, the company has sunk $90 million into renovations and upgrades.

Marriott rolls out prototype for new guest rooms at two brands

WASHINGTON -- Marriott International launched a design for new guest room prototypes for its full-service Marriott and Renaissance brands as part of an overall effort to bolster the in-room environment for its guests.

The rollout of the new guest room decor dovetails with Marriott’s announced plan in January to improve the bedding across all of its hotel brands.

Marriott said the new guest rooms will be installed in all newly developed hotels and replace the current room decor and bedding in existing properties undergoing renovations.

“These rooms have a whole new look and feel,” said J.W. Marriott, Jr., chairman and CEO of Marriott International. “We heard our guests say they wanted more luxury, comfort and a stylish space ... We pulled elements from some of our best hotels around the world and took the room designs to a whole new level. This is a major step for us, and a home run according to our research.”

Marriott said the guest rooms’ new look emulates the recently redesigned Park Lane Marriott in London. The primary colors lean toward cherry wood and yellow and red tones, while the overall style is designed to convey “timeless sophistication”.

Guests can expect an uncluttered, “clean and crisp” look accented with “stone, glass and chrome finishes,” according to the hotel chain. Bathrooms will be upgrade as well with, among other things, granite countertops and a custom line of Bath & Body Works Energizing Aromatherapy products.

And then, of course, there is the central component of the guestroom: the bed. New bedding will encompass a feather-filled mattress topper, 300-thread-count sheets and a white-sheeted duvet.

Marriott intendeds to upgrade the beds and bedding at more than 2,400 of its hotels worldwide. By the end of the year, some 628,000 new beds will be installed across all of its eight hotel brands.

Check Rates or Make a Booking.

To contact the reporter who wrote this article, send e-mail to Michael Milligan at mmilligan@travelweekly.com.

Ala Moana to be transformed into condo-hotel

The 1,150-room Ala Moana Hotel will soon undergo a multimillion-dollar renovation and conversion to a hotel-condominium resort.

The property’s name will be changed to the Ala Moana Hotel Condominium, according to new owner Crescent Heights.

Guest rooms and public areas will be refurbished, and additions will include a tranquil meditation area with a reflection pool and an expansive, state-of-the-art fitness center.

The hotel-condominium concept gives owners the freedom to use their unit as often as they wish while enjoying all the benefits of a full-service hotel.

When they’re not using their unit, owners can rent them through the property’s on-site management company.

Kitschy but cramped, could the Waikikian have survived?
Jim Kelly
Editor's Notebook

I arrived in Hawaii just after last call, the absolute last call, at the Tahitian Lanai.

Even though I never saw the old Waikikian when it was alive, the place fascinates me, mostly because pieces of it are still standing, those triangular shark-tooth balconies of the Tiki Tower grabbing my eyes as I whip through the curve on Ala Moana.

The wreck of the Waikikian comes right up to the sidewalk, and you can touch the lava rock, the big timbers that gave the hotel its kitschy Polynesian look. You can look up and see the faded curtains in the room windows, see the balconies where tourists draped in Kodaks and cheap lei stood and marveled at how it was 22 degrees back home in Michigan.

Near the ruins of the lobby, look up and see the sign that warned long-ago guests that the walk was slippery when wet.

You can even look inside the chain-link fence and see what's left of the graceful spiral staircase that curved above the registration desk, one of those cool, impractical design touches from the 50s, like free-standing fireplaces and Continental spare tires.

In writing about the Waikikian, and its probable erasure from the planet in the next couple of months, I found nostalgia but not much enthusiasm for talking about what might have been if it hadn't changed hands so many times, if the Japanese hadn't fumbled with it in the 1980s, if the economy hadn't tanked, if prices hadn't gone crazy to the point that Hilton paid $20 million for that tiny sliver of land.

Could the Waikikian have survived?

Tiki-style and retro cool is suddenly the rage. Check out the artfully kitschy Aston Waikiki Beach Hotel and Tiki's restaurant to see what draws attention. There are travel books and Web sites tracking down the best remaining tiki architecture in the U.S. Could the Waikikian have done for tropical architecture what Miami Beach did for art deco?

"Sure, maybe people stay one night, and then let me have a building with an Internet connection and air conditioning," says Don Goo, partner of the late Pete Wimberly, who designed the Waikikian.

Grudgingly, I accept that he may have a point. We like the idea of the Waikikian, but not the reality of it. Deafened by the traffic noise and jammed into the naturally ventilated Waikikian probably would have had me whimpering for a fluffy king bed and arctic A/C at some generic high-rise.

Goo says there are plenty of contemporary projects that try to do what the Waikikian did 50 years ago by using natural elements of wood and stone and imbuing designs with Polynesian motifs.

An example, he said, are the "sails" that make the Hawaii Convention Center so striking. Looking at photos of the old lobby of the Waikikian, built with a soaring, triangular roof that resembled the outstretched wings of a bird, or even the sails of a voyaging canoe, you can see the connection.

But I can see the convention center anytime.

Before the wrecking ball arrives at the Waikikian, I'm going to stand outside the fence, squint hard and imagine I see Duke Kahanamoku pulling up in somebody's boxy white Thunderbird convertible. The sounds of Auntie Mary Lucas's ukulele will come from somewhere in the gardens, laughter will drift from the Tahitian Lanai, and smoke from somebody's Pall Mall will mix with flower-scents and salt air.

Sheraton Princess Kaiulani preserves its royal heritage
Prabha Natarajan
Pacific Business News

World War II was over, airplanes were bringing in more tourists daily than the Matson liners, and there weren't enough beds in Waikiki.

The 1950s was the perfect backdrop for developers to invest in beachfront and off-the-beach high-rise hotel towers in Waikiki. The number of visitors to the state was increasing at a steady clip of 20 percent annually and the 2,000 hotel rooms, the count at the start of the decade, was hardly enough.

Many of the towers were built as no-frills hotels for airline passengers, in contrast to the high-end tourists sailing in on the luxury liners and staying at the Moana Surfrider or Royal Hawaiian.

Featuring colonial doors, lobby pillars and wide entryways, what is now the Sheraton Princess Kaiulani hotel, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, is one of several hotels from that era that still retain much of their original architecture and interior design.

The hotel was built by Matson Navigation Co. as a functional hotel facing the Moana Surfrider on the Hawaiian royal estate of Ainahau. Architectural firm Gardner A. Dailey F.A.I.A. designed a 296-room hotel that still retained some remnants of the two-story royal home's original garden, including peacocks and palm trees.

The $4.5-million hotel was officially opened on June 11, 1955, the same year as the Outrigger Reef on the Beach, Biltmore and Edgewater Hotel were built.

The Princess Kaiulani hotel was noted for its feel of openness. The huge front doors that spanned the length of the hotel were similar to old colonial-style homes. They were opened in the mornings to let the day in and closed up at night before bedtime. Today, the doors still stand facing Kalakaua Avenue and offer guests access to the pool.

Other changes were made to the original structure after Matson sold it to Japanese industrialist Kenji Osano, founder of Kyo-ya Corp., in 1959. Osano added 210 rooms over the next year and it was built up to its present size of 1,150 rooms with the addition of the 29-story Ainahau Tower in 1970.

What has lasted through the decades is the hotel's collection of historic photographs and mementos of the princess, whose name it bears.

The front lobby is home to a life-size portrait of Princess Kaiulani in an elegant, yellow morning dress, painted by Lloyd Sexton. It's flanked by two kahili, a feather staff that symbolizes Hawaiian royalty and lineage. Across from it is an enclave that narrates the life of the princess in pictures -- in the garden, trying on a kimono for fun, the sad, dignified woman she became -- all set in a backdrop of dusky rose wallpaper and subdued lighting.

An adjacent glass cupboard displays musical instruments, knick-knacks and weapons that were an integral part of the royal home. On the 11th floor, the Robert Louis Stevenson room provides a spectacular view of the ocean and celebrates the princess's special relationship with the poet, including a copy of a poem he wrote for her.

Jim Kelly
Pacific Business News

The Waikikian, an empty, tattered remnant of the pre-jet, pre-condo, pre-high-rise days of Waikiki, will soon be demolished to make room for a 38-story time-share tower.

Wedged between the Ilikai and the Hilton Hawaiian Village Beach Resort & Spa, a piece of the Waikikian hotel is the last structure remaining in Waikiki from the brief postwar era when angular, low-slung modern designs were paired with dark native woods, glass and lava rock to create a new kind of tropical architecture.

The Waikikian closed in 1996 and most of it was demolished, including its beloved open-air bar, the Tahitian Lanai, and the lobby with its soaring parabolic roof.

The Tiki Tower, built in 1959 as an addition to the hotel, is empty but remains standing, a six-story relic from the days of "Hawaiian Eye," Arthur Lyman and Pall Malls.

This battered portal into 1950s tropical design will soon disappear. Norman Hong, vice chairman of Group 70 International Inc., which is designing the new tower for Hilton, said the Tiki Tower is expected to be demolished in the next two to three months, with construction on the new building scheduled for early 2006.

As with most commercial buildings, few appreciated the Waikikian and similar designs, known broadly today as "tiki-style," until it was too late. The Waikikian, which opened in 1956, joined dozens of other postwar Hawaii landmarks that were bulldozed to make room for structures that were more profitable but less stylish.

Even as Henry Kaiser was laying plans for the mammoth Hawaiian Village complex next door, hotelier Fred Dailey enlisted George "Pete" Wimberly to design the Waikikian, a small, mid-priced hotel surrounded by tropical gardens.

Wimberly, who died in 1996 at age 80, was the casual genius behind some of Hawaii's most famous tropical architecture of the 1950s and 1960s. His firm,Wimberly Allison Tong & Goo, is now one of the world's leading resort architecture firms.

Wimberly's colleague, Donald Goo, senior vice president of the firm, said Wimberly would not be troubled by the construction of a high-rise on the Waikikian site.

"Pete wouldn't have objected to it," Goo said. "He might have been a bit nostalgic, but he was a pretty modern guy. He might say they don't do it as good today."

The Waikikian was essentially a motel disguised as a tropical resort. But Wimberly's design ensured that the Waikikian was more than a Polynesian Howard Johnson's.

The triangular tapa pattern on the balcony railings is still the hotel's most distinctive feature. A two-story carving by local sculptor Edward Brownlee once rose tall above the roofline on the Ala Moana side of the building and a shield in the shape of an elongated sunburst remains.

An ABC Store and several other shops occupy what was once the walkway between the Tiki Tower and the lobby.

Where the lobby stood is a collection of hotel detritus. But the bottom half of the spiral staircase that was the most prominent feature of the lobby remains anchored to the concrete.

A few tikis also remain, including the stump of one that has stood guard near the entrance for nearly 50 years. Near the ABC Store is what's left of a fountain.

Group 70's Hong is aware of the nostalgia associated with the Waikikian and said it's possible some of its elements, such as the tikis, may find a home on the Hilton grounds.

He said the firm is aiming for a design that stands apart from the other Hilton towers "in the tradition of a grand Hawaiian hotel."

"Stylistically, it's not going to be like the old Waikikian, but scale-wise it's going to be very appropriate, very village-like," he said. "We're not going to do a throwback. We're doing a contemporary Hawaiian design.

The renovated Sheraton Keauhou Bay Resort & Spa on the Big Island will reopen officially on April 8 and the Grand Opening will be on April 30.

The resort underwent a two-year, $70 million renovation under new ownership and management. The property has been open for business since last fall but the redesign won't be completed until later this month.

The 22-acre resort, about seven miles south of Kailua-Kona, hopes to boost the economy in the predominantly coffee-growing district.

"Sheraton Keauhou is now an important part of the Big Island's economic engine and will soon employ nearly 350 staff and management," said General Manager Charldon Thomas.

The resort also houses Keauhou Convention Center with 36,000 square feet of meeting space.

Sheraton Keauhou Bay Resort & Spa