News, Tips & Bargains : Another Hotel Reopens on Kauai

The largest resort on Kauai, knocked out of business for more than two years by Hurricane Iniki, reopens June 26 with a new look, new owners and a new marketing approach that includes the offer of time-share units.

Formerly the 840-room Westin Kauai, the property is being reborn as the Kauai Marriott Resort and Beach Club, which combines a 350-room hotel with a 232-unit “vacation ownership,” or time share, resort. Marriott is spending $36 million renovating, hoping to give the 51-acre property the feeling of a royal Hawaiian estate, said General Manager Brad Snyder.

A two-acre reflecting pond studded with immense marble statuary--part of the resort’s former European fantasy look--is being replaced with a tropical garden featuring a waterfall, banyans and 80 coconut palms, in keeping with Kauai’s image as the “Garden Isle” (pictured right). Guests in the hotel and beach club will share facilities, including what has been called Hawaii’s largest swimming pool, two 18-hole championship golf courses and boat rides through lagoons with exotic wildlife, from flamingos to llamas.

Rates at the Kauai Marriott Resort will start at $195 a night for a garden room, with an ocean-view deluxe room going for $290. Ownership shares in the Beach Club are expected to range from $12,000 to $20,000 for a week’s visit annually. More flexible than traditional time shares, the shares may be kept for a lifetime, passed on to the owners’ children, exchanged or resold through Marriott.

The reopening of the resort, once the island’s biggest employer, is a milestone in Kauai’s recovery from the devastating September, 1992, hurricane, and should help ease a jobless rate that has been running at 12%.

Most of Kauai’s hotels, restaurants and visitor activities are back in action. The 600-room Hyatt Regency Kauai, which reopened just six months after the hurricane, has been running nearly full, and the Princeville Hotel also has done well. Islandwide, hotel occupancy averaged 70% in February.

But insurance squabbles and ownership changes have kept three big hotels closed: the Stouffer Waiohai Beach Resort, Poipu Beach Hotel and Coco Palms Resort. A settlement was just reached in a lease dispute at the Sheraton Kauai Beach Hotel, which should pave the way for its reopening, said Kauai Mayor Maryanne Kusaka.