Queen Kapiʻolani Hotel Waikīkī Beach — Attraction in Honolulu

We started looking for a venue for my daughter's graduation party back in May ‘24. We chose the Leahi Room because we like their indoor/outdoor concept & the beautiful backdrop of Diamond Head. We'd never been to any parties here. After celebrating ours, it seems as though majority of our guests haven't either. We inquired about group rates for rooms since we were expecting out of town guests. After pricing around, our guests booked elsewhere. But for my family and I since we needed to setup early & get ready, we decided to stay for 2 nights. We booked a 1 bdrm suite through Booking.com because it was cheaper than directly w/QKH even with the Kamaaina discount. No brainer there! The event manager was very helpful, answering questions we had, working w/us to make it a perfect night. Fast forward to May 2025. We had no set budget, but our idea of how much was BLOWN OUT THE DOOR, 5x the minimum we needed to spend. I won't say exact dollar amount, but to give you a comparison, it was equivalent to one year of our daughter's private school tuition! The hotel is on the smaller side, parking is limited/valet only, small lobby and a good coffee shop. Close to the Zoo & beach. Pool is small, no Jacuzzi, but our 8yr. old & his cousins enjoyed it. Our penthouse suite was nice, spacious w/a big lanai & view. Although it's been 20+ yrs. since our wedding along w/our family & friends who have had some kind of event at a hotel in our experience normally you get "taken care of" when booking a special event. Small or big, some kind of loyalty is usually offered. At least parking for the night of. As mentioned earlier, my wife found a better deal for our room through a third party instead of directly w/QKH. Basically, a tourist can get it cheaper than a local. Something's wrong with that! Day of check in, we use our local ID, and we need to pay for parking, so my wife asks if they offer kamaaina rates for parking? They respond they can't honor it cause we didnt book it through them. Well it's not our fault that it was cheaper outside. As much as we tried to explain we are checking in with a local ID, they stuck with "that's our policy." So once again, not only did we pay the same price a tourist pays for a room but also for parking. We're not asking for free, but at least honor some kind of loyalty for a Kamaaina, none whatsoever. On the day of our event we received nothing but praises from our guests. How good the food was, the beautiful view, & lounge deck area, etc. Kotomi & her staff were exceptional on making sure everything went smoothly. At the end of the party I spoke with her to express my concerns. Mentioned how being a local, spending the $ we did, we felt under appreciated just asking for simple kamaaina discount on parking. She stated she would inform the hotel on my feedback. My sister works for a big hotel. She told us if QKH really wanted to they could have offered us some kind of compensation. It might be a smaller hotel but here's my point... Our guests, mostly Locals, who praised our venue choice, if they were to ask me, I would honestly tell them, expect to be treated as a tourist even if you are a local spending a lot. I follow Leahi room/QKH’s social media, looking through their pictures there's not much locals. I could be wrong but that's my observation. It just mind boggles me how a Kamaaina discount was never honored. Policy or not, how do you expect locals to support businesses & "buy local" if the locals don't get the support back. This doesn’t take away from the workers of QKH. The ones I interacted with were extraordinary making us feel welcomed. Even the front desk clerk, I understand she's just following the rules which were put forth by management, the ones "behind the scenes.” It’s just disappointing after spending ALOT of $ not just for our stay & parking but for a graduation party equal to a private school tuition, I feel "behind the scenes" the local Ohana should be taken into consideration more, because the name of your hotel is Queen Kapiolani not...

Upon checking in to our room, the service and staff was really nice. The transaction for check-in was seamless! However, you're probably reading this because you saw. 3 star review. Why I gave it a 3 star is because for the price per a night we expected some decent sound proofing and bathroom utilities to work properly. Also decent usable Wi-Fi speeds.

Every day around 5am, the paper thin exterior walls and balcony doors make everything sound like they're next to your room. From the roosters morning call, to trucks backing up sounds. Good thing we brought our earplugs for incase one of us snores, didn't think we needed it for the room itself. If you're planning to have the roosters and the truckers wake you up at that time without an alarm clock, you got that extra service. But for most of us, we would like to sleep in abit before we start the day, or at least past 5am. At night across the hotel from where our room was facing, was an open balcony of a bar or something, so it gets pretty noisy until the bar closes early around 11pm, so if you want to sleep before that, you'll need earplugs again. On top of that, the black-out curtains blocks majority of the light, but since it's white, most of it reflects back into the window and back into the room through the sides, so it still gets pretty bright in the room, bring eye masks if you're planning to sleep past sunrise.

Next, is the bathroom. Very disappointing, the faucet if you have it set to the middle temperature would be scorching hot, so you'll need to set it full to the cold side to get some cool water. 80% of it is on hot water. The bath-tub, don't leave the water running to test the temperature, because it will be flooded within a few seconds. If you think turning the showerhead on would allow the water to drain, you're wrong, it will continually accumulate as you shower, unless you turn if off to wash your body or something.

Lastly, the Wi-Fi, you would think at this day and age would allow you to watch YouTube at least on 720p, nope. It will stutter randomly sometimes so you would either have to wait, or refresh the page. Same goes with IG and Tiktok, a 10s reel would sudden be 15s because you'll have to wait in the middle of it to load.

Other than those problems, the beds were really nice, perfect hard-to-softness for me. Nice fluffy pillows. Bed sheets and everything looks and smells clean. Room likes decent and clean with standard hotel amenities. They even provide you with some sunscreen, and free souvenir water bottles. Even tho the welcome package said we get 2 free bottles of water, we never got those and never pursued for it.

In conclusion, for the price of the hotel, from hotels I've stayed, with the price range, definitely below average. Understand it's a pretty old hotel, but maybe changing the balcony doors to something a little more sound proof would be nice. Guests shouldn't need to be using earplugs to sleep through the morning, or sleep before 11pm. Don't know if everyone likes a ankle high, flooded bathtub during shower either, because...

This hotel had a good location but there were some flaws. The location on Waikiki is perfect with nice views of both Diamond Head and the beautiful blue ocean. The staff members were very accommodating and friendly. The check in was smooth with a welcome drink and the rooms were pretty clean. The entire hotel had a nice scent throughout. It was well equipped with a gym, pool, place for coffee and a restaurant. There was a good sense of sustainability with the reusable water bottles and water refill stations throughout the hotel. We also LOVED how the hotel had many beach chairs and they were very high quality. This feature was perfect for beach days on Waikiki. They also had many beach towels for the pool or beach. However there were some flaws.||1. Outdated bathrooms: Our shower was very old had a large hole in it which was patched over. The vanity was nice but the rest of the bathroom seemed very old and out of date. There is a need for them to renovate the bathrooms.||2. Misleading pictures: Looking through the pictures of the hotel, the rooms are pictured as bright, large, and open. Instead, our room with one only window was dark, cramped, and very dark. I felt that the pictures online were misleading and did not represent the experience we had.||3. LOUD: Every night there seems to be a TON of street noise with cars revving their engines until midnight and the sounds of drag racing. Overall, the nights were very loud with lots of car and street noise. This also could have been amplified with the poorly sealed door to the balcony with an inch gap at the bottom. I feel that the noise issue could be mitigate with newer balcony doors that insulate the hotel better and seal it off from the street noise. For me, this did not necessarily impact my quality of sleep but for a lighter sleeper, they could have issues. Also, our room was right up against the elevator which was VERY loud. I have NEVER witnessed an elevator being this loud from the room.||4. Issues with valet parking: Upon our arrival around 6PM, we were informed that they were unable to valet our car and we had to park it somewhere else. After 20 hours of traveling, we had to park our car more than a mile away from the hotel and walk back. Thankfully, the hotel gave us a $50 credit that we used at the coffee shop the next few days. They were able to take our car into the valet parking the next day but we sometimes experienced 10-20 minute waits to get our car and long lines dropping it off. ||Overall, it’s a 5/10. there were some very nice features to the hotel such as the location and beach equipment. However, there were some large issues that definitely can and will impact the quality of your stay. I most likely would not stay here again unless the issues are addressed. I believe there are better options in Honolulu for similar prices.||Also, just a little disclaimer: there were MANY dogs at the hotel. Personally we LOVE our furry friends but if someone in your group has a fear or allergy of dogs, this could...