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Condé Nast Traveler Readers Choice Awards Favor Killer Views, Weird Bathrooms
The stunning coastal views from Hotel Du Palais
They say the customer is always right, and we generally agree. PR pushes and clever marketing can often make a hotel sound better than it is, but leave it to a consumer to give you the inside track with merciless honesty. This is precisely why Readers Choice lists are more trusted than other carefully cultivated round-ups.
Last week, Condé Nast Traveler's unveiled its 22nd Annual Readers Choice Awards, a respectable overview of the best cities, islands, resorts, airlines, and other travel-related miscellany. It's the location-specific hotel and resort "Top Three" lists that caught our eye first, of course, but there were some questionable standouts as well.
Some of the top picks were self-evident, like Biarritz' Hotel Du Palais, honored by readers as the Top European Resort and called out by our discerning HotelChatter family for its stellar beach and pool views. Here on the mainland, meanwhile, Pebble Beach's Inn at Spanish Bay was named one of the Best U.S. Resorts. Having taken in the coastal surroundings along Monterey Peninsula's famed 17-Mile Drive last year, we can vouch for the Inn's luxury credentials.
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The Maui Prince To Remain Open; Hilton Portland to Close for a Few Selected Weeks
The water will not run dry at the Maui Prince.
Some good news for Hawaii: The Maui Prince Hotel will actually not be closing next month as was first reported earlier this week. Instead, the hotel will remain open under new management.
There was always a possibility that the hotel would not close if it could get a new management company to come in and run the place. But interestingly, Wells Fargo--the bank that's now in charge of the hotel, thanks to its owners defaulting on the mortgage--would not say which company is managing the hotel. Any of you know which company it is? Spill it.
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Maui Owie: The Maui Prince to Close Next Month
The first Hawaiian hotel casualty of the recession has been claimed--The Maui Prince Hotel and Makena Golf Course will close on September 16, according to news reports. The hotel's management company, Prince Resorts Hawaii, was forced to close the hotel after the owners defaulted on a mortgage of $192.5 million. And it wasn't just the mortgage the owners couldn't keep up with--they couldn't keep up with their end of the operation contract either.
So while a hotel in foreclosure usually doesn't affect the guest experience during their stay, once the hotel owners are unable to meet the demands of their contract with the hotel management company, then things really start to go south.
Tags: Snapshot / Hotel Pools / Maui Hotels / Four Seasons Hotels / Waldorf-Astoria Collection / → All Tags
Start Your Vacation By Waiting in a Line at the Grand Wailea Resort
Last month, we told you that the Grand Wailea Resort and Spa in Wailea, Maui might have the coolest pool amenities (little grottos, a kiddie pool with a beach, waterslides galore) but that the place was too crowded with children for anyone to truly enjoy.
Well, we thought you might like some photographic evidence of just how crowded the pool scene is: here's a snapshot of the line for beach cabanas that we snapped last Friday.
Guests (only hotel guests are allowed access to the resort) must wait in this line before obtaining one of the beach cabanas. As usual with pool chairs and the like, the early bird gets the coveted seat on the beach and by early bird we mean folks who rise before 7:30am.
Also, a quick word about those cabanas--they look ratty and old. We stayed at this resort back in 1996 and we're pretty sure those are the same cabanas in use then. Not surprisingly, the GWR is a part of the Waldorf-Astoria Collection, whose resort properties continue to disappoint with their old, run-down facilities.
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Honua Kai Wants To Save You Money On Maui (We Think)
Last time we checked out the Honua Kai Resort & Spa on Maui, they were just about to open the first half of the resort and had $195 opening specials. Today, it's still a year before the second half of the resort opens, but the specials are back with the frugal vacationer in mind.
The new deal is that from September 1 through December 12, Honua Kai is offering you a "dream deal" with up to 50% off rack rates, which brings them back to the $195 a night rate they started with. Their press release on the deal is very careful to name lots of reasons why you can save money at the Honua Kai: for example, you get a shade umbrella for free next to the pool, instead of the $100 a day you might pay at other Maui resorts for a shade cabana. You can also save some bucks by cooking in your own suite, they suggest, because you can now buy any ingredients you're after at the Aina Gourmet Market.
Be careful with the fine print, though. Even though Honua Kai seems very keen to save you money, there are quite a few mentions of a $25 per day "daily resort service fee" on their website, so check if you'll need to pay that too before you do your calculations.
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We Go Cuckoo for Pupus at The Fairmont Kea Lani’s New Luana Lounge
Our most memorable childhood meals were bite sized delights served on a beverage napkin with frilly toothpicks, so it’s no wonder we swoon for the pupu. These island-style hors d’oeuvres are a staple of Hawaiian luaus and happy hours, every bit as much as the Mai Tai, Piña Colada, Blue Hawaii, and Lava Flow.
The Fairmont Kea Lani, Maui celebrates the pupu at its new Luana Lounge. (“Luana” is the Hawaiian word meaning to be at leisure, enjoy pleasant surroundings, to live in comfort and ease.) The new lobby bar features a new theme, new menu, new bar, new décor and new furnishings that create a more authentically local ambiance. We love all the new updates, none of which distract from the stunning, colorful South Shore sunsets.
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Coming Soon: The Most Scenic Place to Take a Dip in Wailea
We just spent a ridiculously relaxing week on Maui but we were able to do some hotel snooping while we there. We have oodles to report on the Hawaii hotel scene, but at this very moment, we’re most excited about the July 10th debut of Four Seasons Resort Maui at Wailea’s new infinity-edged swimming pool.
When we site inspected the hard hat area hole in the ground this past weekend, it looked like it had a ways to go, but Director of Marketing, Mark Simon told us that after several deadline extensions, what’s being dubbed as the "Serenity Pool" would finally be ready for hotel guests right after the 4th of July holiday weekend.
We sure hope so, because the weather was beyond perfect while we were there (as if there’s really ever a bad time to go to Hawaii weather-wise), and we’d hate to see summer vacationers miss out on what’s going to be a truly spectacular, upscale, kid-free pool experience.
Tags: Hotel Opening Rates / Hotel Openings / Maui Hotels / → All Tags
$195 Enough To Start At Half-Finished Honua Kai Resort
Maui's getting its first new resort for ages, when the Honua Kai Resort opens up on North Beach Kaanapali at the end of January. It'll be full of self-contained suites (they're very proud of the Bosch dishwashers, for a start) to give you a luxury experience on the beach.
Developer Intrawest, who normally specialize in mountain resorts, have decided to get their toes wet with a beachfront resort this time, so we hope they've figured out the difference. There are a few telltale mountain influences going on, with waterfalls heading into one of the swimming pools and another pool which has the shape of a river, but they both sound pretty nice to us.
Honua Kai has got opening rates of $195 a night, or $250 a night with an ocean view. Bear in mind that the second phase of the resort, including the Konea building and two of the three pools, isn't due to open until spring of 2010 so there'll still be some construction work going on somewhere--but perhaps the half price opening rates make up for that.
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Sheraton Maui Gives You Notescast For Your iPod
We love our iPod and we love anything new we get to do with it. Call us suckers for technology, but we actually do think it's cool that the Sheraton Maui Resort & Spa has got together a Notescast for iPods.
What that means is you can download a file off their site onto your iPod and bingo, you get a mini-website of information to enjoy whenever you want. The Sheraton's Notescast has got 81 pages of info so you can move around and find out pretty much anything you need to know, and you can make your friends jealous even before you leave by showing them pictures.
Now, skeptics, we see the obvious comment here: why do all this on a tiny iPod screen when there's this whole big internet thing where you can probably get all the same information. The answer: because you can. Reason enough, right?
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Run-Down Maui Hotel To Close, Finally
A few years back we wrote about the scary Aston Maui Lu hotel in which we cited a guest review calling the place, "an old hotel that needs to be taken down, it has outlived it's life, which is obvious because half of it is boarded up and falling down."
A year later, our Hawaii expert Alex Salkever called this place a bad rate and cited another guest review which called the place "unsafe."
Yikes. But fortunately, the hotel is closing down its operation as of November 10th. Maui News reports that the hotel will be leveled and in its place, time-shares will be built.
Actually, we started to feel bad for the Aston Maui Lu after reading a bit of the history of the place and its struggles to survive after the Wailea Resort went up in 1976. And even sadder, 41 hotel employees will lose their jobs.
That said, if you have some sort of retro-vacation hankering to stay here, just make sure you do it before November 10th.
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Hawaii Deal Alert :: Hotel Hana-Maui Offering Deep Discount
[Ed Note: Alex Salkever is the founder of Hawaii travel blog Hawaiirama.com and specialized Hawaii search engine FyndHawaii.com]
The Hotel Hana-Maui is one of Hawaii's palaces of understated posh and it rarely offers killer deals.
Set just above Hamoa Bay in secluded Hana (celebs like Oprah love the solitude), the resort is run by the same smart hotel company that manages the Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur.
So, here's the scoop: rates for the hotel's most popular room category, the spectacular Sea Ranch Cottages, have dropped to $495 per night--a savings of $155 per night off rack. Add to that a $150 room credit for a total savings of $305 each day (per couple, natch).
The cheaper Bay Cottage Jr. Suite has dropped to $395 per night -- a savings of $100, plus a $100 credit, for a total savings of $200 per day.
If you still have cashola, you really can't beat this deal.
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Maui Wowie at The Paia Inn
Maui, the second biggest island in Hawaii and the most touristy, has its share of monster resorts, expensive, over-the-top luau magnets and villas. So when we heard about Paia Inn, a little cool outpost on the island's North Shore, we thought, oh yeah!
This is a quiet, boutique inn on the North Shore's Hana Highway. Five suite rooms sit smack on the beach and away from the craziness of those gigantic resorts. The rooms have flat-screened TVs, bamboo floors, and funky artwork, plus a boutique and an art gallery right on site.
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