Hotels hit honeymoon couples with pricey new 'site fees'

Hotels hit honeymoon couples with pricey new 'site fees'
Prabha Natarajan
Pacific Business News

Hawaii hotels are significantly increasing the fees they charge couples for wedding ceremonies on hotel grounds, sometimes by as much as 1,000 percent.

At The Westin Maui Resort & Spa, 386 couples chose between a gazebo on an outlook bordered by a meandering stream or a pavilion with a waterfall as a backdrop to get married last year.

If they got married before June, they would have paid $550 as a hotel guest, $650 if not.

Today, the resort charges $1,800 for use of the gazebo and $7,500 for the pavilion.

The 177 percent and 1,054 percent increases, respectively, boosted the resort's wedding business revenue to $1.3 million in 2004.

"We wanted to streamline our clientele and gain more control over who we allowed, at what times and so forth on resort property," said Tina Canderle, Westin's director of romance.

Dozens of resorts and hotels are finding big money to be made charging "site fees" for weddings, especially to nonguests. As state tourism marketers pursue more high-end wedding visitors, hotels are finding that many couples, caught up in the excitement of a Hawaii wedding, are already braced to pay hefty prices for idyllic beachfront settings.

Weddings are now big business for most hotels, and many employ staff members with titles such as director of romance and wedding planner.

For example, the Four Seasons Resort Hualalai on the Kohala Coast had to add another wedding coordinator to its staff last year because of the increasing number of queries from Mainland brides.

But that's squeezing out independent wedding coordinators who once worked closely with hotels. They now have to pay the increased site fees, passing them on to customers.

"I paid $200 as a site fee and now they raised it to $2,400. Isn't this insane?" said Debbie Cravatta, owner of Paradise Weddings Hawaii in Waikoloa on the Big Island.

Cravatta referred to The Mauna Kea Resort on the Big Island, which raised its site fees to $2,400 starting Jan. 1.

"The bigger resorts are squeezing out wedding operators like us," Cravatta said. "Before, it used to be let's get a wedding to the Big Island and away from Maui, and we would work toward it collectively. Now it's divide and conquer."

Carolee Higashino, president of A White Orchid Wedding Inc. and board member of the Maui Visitors Bureau, blames the mark-up on the state's strategy of catering to tourists with more money.

"If we focus only on one segment of the market we are pricing ourselves out," Higashino said. "Low-end, middle-class weddings are our bread and butter."

Typically, most young couples fit into this category and they are going to Las Vegas or cheaper Caribbean destinations, she said. These days, Higashino takes many of her couples to private estates and beaches for their weddings.

However, hotels aren't bothered by the loss in volume.

"Business is booming for us," said La Roma Tomosada, weddings and special events manager at the Mauna Kea Resort.

She said brides want destination weddings because they can make a vacation out of it and limit their guest list. They usually come for a week, book 20 to 30 rooms, and hold a welcome reception, golf tournaments and other activities throughout the week leading up to the wedding.

Tomosada said the resort with its two properties -- Mauna Kea Beach Hotel and Hapuna Beach Prince Hotel -- wants to encourage couples to stay on-site and spend on-site. Its strategy is to discourage bookings by couples staying elsewhere.

Wedding packages start at $2,400 and go up to $4,800 at Mauna Kea Resort.

At the Westin Maui, brides are charged from $3,375 to $5,600 for a package that includes champagne, flutes and cake.

The resort conducted 386 weddings last year compared to 427 in 2003.

"We used to have six weddings a day," Westin's Canderle said. "We got a lot of guest feedback saying there was no service and it felt like Vegas."

The lower volume meant higher prices. But it helped boost the image of the hotel by offering more personal attention and discouraging outsiders, she said.

"We would have photographers show up in torn pants, not showered," Canderle said. "They were not affiliated with Westin but because it was a wedding on the Westin property, people believed this was Westin quality."

Reach Prabha Natarajan at 955-8041 or pnatarajan@bizjournals.com.