‘Alohilani Resort Waikiki Beach — Hotel in Honolulu

The ‘Alohilani Resort Waikiki is a great oceanfront property in Honolulu’s Waikiki area. It consists of 2 towers, the Seascape Tower, and its oceanfront cousin, the Beachside Tower. I stayed here for 4 nights on a family vacation in mid-September in an ocean view room on the 26th floor of the Seascape Tower. We used a Stay for 4 Nights, Pay for 3 Deal, coming out to around a total of $1,400, or around $350 / night on average. Out of a scale of 1 to 5 leis, the ‘Alohilani Resort gets 2.5 leis. So now onto the pros and cons of why this hotel got 2.5 leis and why it didn’t get 5 leis. ||||PROS:||||1. Location: The first pro is that the hotel is centrally located to many of Waikiki’s top attractions. It is right across the street from Waikiki Beach, is around a 10-15 minute walk from the International Marketplace and the Royal Hawai’ian Center, as well as a short bus ride from the Ala Moana Center. The area is very walkable and the hotel is right by the bus stops on Kuhio Street.||||2. Modern / Renovated Rooms/Lobby: The 2nd pro are the new, renovated rooms. The rooms looked very nice and clean. The carpet and much of the room’s ambience felt new. ||||3. Large Spaces / Lobby Inside: The 3rd pro are the large lobby and spaces inside the hotel. The lobby and spaces were so big that it felt like a piece of cake to roam around. There are plenty of spaces to explore, from the lobby and concierge, to the business center, to the fitness center, and more. ||||4. Liveliness: The 4th pro is how much life the hotel and the surrounding area have. Outside, being in Waikiki, the area is filled with tourists walking on the street. The hotel is not too far from many of the luaus and performances in Waikiki. Last but not least, for those who like to party, the 5th floor is home to not just the pool and the Swell Bar, but also a DJ that keeps the floor live with a lot of music. If you like the bustle and hustle, this is a pro. If you’re more of a quiet person, this might be a con.||||5. Variety of Rooms: The 5th pro is the variety of rooms available. The hotel offers a variety of rooms and room options available, from city view rooms, to ocean view and ocean front rooms, and even Diamond Head view rooms. The hotel even has accessible rooms for those with disabilities.||||6. Water Refill Stations: The 6th pro is the water refill stations around the hotel. There are at least 2 stations with 2 dispensers each, one set each next to each set of tower elevators respectively. A great way to refill and rehydrate after a long walk.||||Now as to why this hotel did not get 5 leis:||||CONS:||||1. Parking: The first con is the parking. Parking often reaches capacity at the hotel and costs a mere $50/night. While not bad as the structure at the Hyatt Regency, this structure has a very limited amount of spaces, making it difficult for one to find parking.||||2. Limited Number of Power Plugs In the Guest Room: The second con is the limited number of power plugs inside the guest room. There were no plugs by the big table, making it hard for someone to work and charge their computer at the same time. My family and I had to take turns using the plugs to charge our devices as there were not enough for a party of 3. If you plan to work in the room here, plan to bring not just your computer and charger, but also an extension cord.||||3. Limited Number of Amenities / Cheap Eats: The 3rd con is the limited number of amenities available on the property. For the $100 credit, we could use it at any of the restaurants at the hotel. Recently, they closed the breakfast buffet on the 2nd Floor of the Seascape Tower, a big disappointment. Unfortunately, what was left for us to use the $100 credit were the Morimoto restaurant and Momosan restaurant, as well as the Swell Pool & Bar, all 3 being expensive options within the hotel. Like many hotels in Waikiki, this hotel lacks cheap eats for those more budget conscious.||||4. Cockroaches in the Lobby and Surrounding Areas: The 4th con is the cockroaches in the lobby area. Throughout my stay, I encountered 2 cockroaches, 1 by the oceanarium area, the other by the business center. The hotel can definitely use some cleaning.||||5. Long Check-In Lines and Process: The 5th con was the long check-in line and process. The front desk line stretched outside the door into the taxi area, taking my party at least 20-30 minutes to check in. ||||6. Delayed Readiness of the Rooms: Building off of the 5th con, the 6th con, and I would say the worst and most fatal con of them all, was the delayed readiness of our room. When we first got to the hotel around 1:30PM-2PM, we were told the room we were initially assigned on the 12th floor of the Beachside Tower would be ready at 3PM. At 3PM, we waited in the 30-minute long line again and checked back with the front desk, and the room still was not ready, with no indication on when it would be ready. At 4:30PM, after 1.5 hours, even worse, they assigned our assigned room in the Beachside Tower to someone else who checked in after us. Despite them upgrading us to the Diamond Head view room in the Seascape Tower for free and giving us a $100 credit to use on the hotel properties, this experience wasted a bunch of my time. The management can definitely use some training on scheduling and room reservations.||||To end a long story short, this is why the ‘Alohilani Resort Waikiki Beach earns 2.5 out of 5 leis from me. Would the cons prevent me from staying here again? Honestly, at this price, even with the special, the cons would prevent me from staying here again, especially with the long lines at the front desk, the uncertainty of when my room will be ready, and the limited number of amenities on site. While I enjoyed the modern rooms, the hotel can for sure use a great deal of improvement in managing its reservation and room availability. Don’t sell me a room you cannot guarantee will be available. I don’t want to stay at a hotel where I have to keep waiting for my room past check in, to the point where getting a room is not guaranteed. I would like to stay here again in the future, but with making my party wait 90 minutes past check-in time with uncertainty on securing a room, our travels will be taking us elsewhere the next time we...

Giving it 4 starts, but closer to 3.5 or 3.75. ||While we would consider staying here again, our stay fell short of expectations considering the Alohilani is listed as a 5-start hotel on Google. ||As we arrived at the hotel in the morning and waited to check-in, there was zero greeting from staff as we waited for someone to help us. No hellos, no "someone will be with you shortly", no welcome. This isn't necessarily something we expect, but for a hotel branded as 5-stars, you would think customer service and greeting upon arrival is a given. The level of hospitality from the beginning seemed to be lacking. Additionally, when we came back to the hotel in the afternoon to retrieve our room keys and had quite a few bags with us, no one offered to help. As we loaded up a bell hop luggage cart ourselves, no one acknowledged us even though at least 5 employees saw us. When we were ready to take our stuff up to the room, one worker just said to us "excuse me you can't take that" without any explanation, telling us to stop, leaving us confused, and then finally told us guests were not allowed to use the carts themselves. A bit odd since 5 other employees saw us fully loading up the cart 5-10 minutes prior. ||Upon arrival into our room, there was something wrong with the toilet where the toilet tank took anywhere between 3-10 minutes to fill up and when we called the front desk it took 10+ minutes for someone to come up and help. ||What also left us a little disappointed in the beginning was the lack of acknowledgement that this stay was for our honeymoon. I say this because in the 5 days leading up to our arrival we received an email and phone call asking us about our stay in which both times we informed them this was for our honeymoon. Both times, the staff member stated a honeymoon gift would be provided to us and there was no acknowledgement from the staff at check-in (again, the small things when it's a 5-star hotel) and there was nothing in our hotel room upon arrival. When my husband went downstairs to check with the staff about someone coming to help with our toilet (after waiting 10+ minutes) and mentioned this being our honeymoon stay and there being no gift, a staff member finally brought something up. ||As part of our booking through AMEX, we had access to the Longboard Club for breakfast and evening bites. If you have to pay for this, I would pass. The continental breakfast was beyond mediocre. The eggs are not great - I've had better eggs at airport lounges. The staff during breakfast was also lacking customer service, with one particular staff member being rude and dismissive as we looked for open seats. If you don't get an inside seat for breakfast, good luck outside because there are hundreds of birds everywhere trying to get your food, landing on your table and seating. The evening service is okay. Beer and wine are included which is nice and the staff members for the evening service were the highlight of staff at the hotel, especially Anson and the other Asian woman (we didn't catch her name). The pasta bar could be better though. For 2 of the 3 evenings the noodles were the same dishes and one of the nights the only other item besides the charcuterie was salad. One of the guys working the pasta bar was super friendly though! ||The hotel pool is okay. For the size of the hotel the pool is probably a little small. Additionally, the Alohilani is on Resort Pass so there are a ton of family it seems that access the pool this way and many kids seemed unsupervised, doing cannon balls and being a disturbance to the guests. ||If your room is on the 5th floor (where the pool is) of the ocean side building, your hallway will smell moldy. ||The room itself is good and has a small couch which is nice, but the bathroom is quite small and the shower was like a 3-star hotel shower in a 5-star hotel. There was not a proper door, only a half-way there glass leading to water getting everywhere. ||Overall, the first impressions left us with starting this stay on a not-so-great feeling. The hotel itself is okay. Not 5-stars though. We typically stay at a different hotel when we're in Waikiki so unless the price difference between the two is major, we will most likely choose to stay at the...

Location, location, location. Across from the beach and easy walk to most everything on the main strip of Waikiki (Kalākaua Avenue), the location is hard to beat. It also sits atop a good coffee shop (Kai Coffee) with friendly staff. That’s the pro.

This hotel shows up as “5-star hotel” in Google search, but it’s far from it. When I think of 5-star hotels I think of some of the Four Seasons or Ritz Carlton Hotels, where you’re taken care of down to your personal preferences and you don’t have to worry about anything.

My husband is allergic to dust mites, and although he usually doesn’t have much trouble in a well cleaned/maintained hotel, I usually request hypoallergenic foam pillows (saying “if they’re available”). I noted that in the reservation, but that was at first ignored. Only after third time of asking, we got the answer (“yes we have foam pillows”) and the pillows.

We got the deluxe ocean view room. When we first arrived, the AC fan was really clunky and loud (like something was stuck), to the point where we had to turn it off in order to sleep. My husband had mild allergic reactions after the first night. It got slightly better after some additional cleaning and filter change, but he was still sniffly and we still turned off the AC at night due to noise.

I understand the room can be small by the ocean, but the bathroom size was another level - it was really cramped (like the door could almost hit the toilet), and it really wasn’t well thought out. For example, it was one of those showers where it was half open/half shielded by glass, but the glass part didn’t extend enough, so every time we took a shower, water would seep out to the floor and soaked the bathmat. This was really annoying, especially in this age of not-everyday housekeeping.

Other little things are like not having enough/high enough towel bars to hang 2 bath towels. It’s a room for 2 people, but there’s just one (strangely low) towel hook on the back of the door, but the only other towel bar is right above the toilet tank and just high enough for face towel, so there’s really no place to hang the 2nd bath towel anywhere.

I also had to ask for another iron because the one in the room was broken and didn’t produce steam, but the 2nd one that they brought was also broken and started sputtering out black flakes, so I just gave up after that.

The coffee machine in the room came with unbranded pods, which is fine, except they were unmarked so we had no idea which was regular/decaf.

When I’ve stayed at well maintained hotels, they’d have clear maintenance schedules for small equipment in the rooms too, like irons, coffee machines or hair drier - it didn’t seem like the case here.

The person at the front desk who checked us in (Mata?) was really nice & she tried to be helpful in getting our room ready.

The view from the room was nice. As with many hotels, the front lobby is a lot more impressive than actual rooms. Compared to a lot of other hotels, though, there’s not a lot of room in the lobby to sit around/meet with people.

The infinity pool, while it offers a nice view at sunset, is pretty small, and how they present the pictures of the cabanas is a bit misleading. They make it seem like the cabanas for rent are right by the pool, but the pool area is on one level, and the cabanas are on the other side of the roof area (5th floor so not like top of the building) that’s one step down among the buildings, so it’s not like you have any view of the pool (or the ocean) from the cabanas.

We went during the Christmas time and they were running some big package deals for the cabanas (it was like $650 for cabanas + food/drink?), so we didn’t feel like that was worth it for us. At normal times, I think it’s $150 to rent but there’s a $100 minimum bar order.

We did enjoy the view. Rather than being on the beach your room is right on Kalākaua Ave though, so if you usually live in a quiet place, you should prepare yourself for some street noise. Our room was on 11th floor so it wasn’t too bad, but I’d imagine it could be worse for...