OUTRIGGER Reef Waikiki Beach Resort — Hotel in Honolulu

A pretty darn nice place at first glance, but after staying here for a prolonged period and work paying for it, I got to a place of being pretty objective. First, the valet is $60 a day and based on valet’s attitudes, gratuity isn’t included. The place gets pretty overrun with people not staying at the hotel passing through to the beach or going to the Monkeypod (which would be great if guests had priority seating, especially which it’s busy, but you don’t). Beautiful view from there, but the beach is far from the nicest spot overall. My room and the other rooms I’ve seen are nice, and the size of the balconies vary. Typical nicer hotel where you pay for everything extra at a premium where it’s included at a 2.5 - 3 star. No microwave, tiny fridge with no freezer, no real storage than a clothes with a four-shelf bookshelf with the safe on the biggest one. No real desk. There’s a chair that could be pulled over to the ever-narrowing counter by the mini fridge, but it feels awkward to sit like that for any real amount of time. On the hotter, sunnier days – which are many – the A/C struggles to keep up, even just set at 70°F and the fan blows pretty loud and constant. Had to have maintenance fix my shower door that wouldn’t stay closed to keep water from going everywhere. Classic 60 grit sandpaper towels. Because it’s an open-air lobby (and Monkeypod), it can be pretty balmy, so hard to get away from the heat and humidity during the day. The gym, while a bit spacious, is pretty limited for what’s available and the quality of equipment. Has more treadmills and elliptical machines than a decent amount of hotels, but I was kind of expecting a bit more for its size and for the price point. Not the most soundproof rooms, but better than most cheaper hotels. Oh but the announcements! The first week alone, the power went out in the middle of the night and an alarm went off, then an announcement was made that the power was going to be off for a couple of hours. I would’ve just slept through it, but instead, we were woken up to be let known the power was out for a little bit. Then, we had a fire alarm go off for a while one evening that turned out to be a false alarm few days later. So not always the most restful evenings.

They had a lot of solo musicians playing. There are events in and around, and plenty of everything around it. Within the hotel campus, it’s pretty self contained with a convenience store, lots of shops for clothes, jewelry and even an art gallery, but classic overpricing. While the room quite nice overall in appearance, the hotel itself is a bit dated in some ways, but was mostly esthetic (although haven’t updated charging ports in rooms to USB-C yet). There is some inconsistency between people at the front desk in terms of how you’re treated and the perks you get. It was more obvious having numerous co-workers to notice this. I had a pretty unique ask while I was here, being a trumpet player that has gigs regularly, I can’t go too long without playing or it won’t have gigs regularly anymore, so I usually bring a trumpet with me anytime I’m gone for more than several days. I bring a practice mute, but it’s pretty unrealistic to normal playing environments and can be detrimental if you worry about maintaining a certain standard of playing if prolonged practice on it happens. I usually ask if the hotel has any rooms anywhere in the building that don’t share walls with customers’ rooms. Depending on the hotel type, most can accommodate. They only said they had the conference rooms, and they were booked. There’s no way they were booked the entire time I was here because my room overlooked them and I saw when they were used. I was told I could book it for $1400. I laughed. I’ve never been told I needed to pay to use any of this spaces for intermittent usage for a few hours a week and working around their schedules. It’s always the more modest hotels that seem to be the most accommodating unless you’re a high roller.

Overall, from my prolonged experience, for the price, I can’t say I would come back...

The only drawback here is the lack of sandy Beach directly attached to the facility. The wave hits the corner of the restaurant attached but the beach is eroded and there is no sand there. A couple of dead palm tree stumps attest to this fact that there was sand and beach front sometime ago. The facility is up to date (not bleeding edge). Mechanicals date it back to the 90s perhaps. Surely it's been renovated since given things like tvs and showers are plenty new. One catch for the two queens room with partial ocean view was the lack of privacy between the bathroom area and the rest of the room. No door separates the two. There is a door to section off the toilet. But that 9 square feet do not allow for putting on clothes or other personal actions. Big problem with toilet paper mount. It's parallel to the backside wall of the toilet tank. You'd have to twist your back 180 degrees to reach it. And if you grab and pull, the paper just lands on the floor to frustrate you. So please be sure everyone in the room is comfortable with the privacy issue and agility issue before booking. The shower is on the bathtub. So you need to step into the bathtub first- FYI on the agility requirements . Sharing the room with casual friends I think would be a problem. A slitted partial divide was all that exists. The mirror on the closest sliding door left no place to hide as it reflects all that's "shaded" behind the partial divide. There is a little electronic safe in the closet. Standard size among other mainline hotels like in LV. The closet is small with half of it occupied by a built in shelf that supports the safe. So pants and jackets will have very limited room to hang. The narrow desk along the TV wall has no seating provision nor an accompanying chair. Really expect you don't work here. Small not very cold fridge in the room. Drinks only and would not recommend even cold cuts to be stored there. Plastic pod coffee made available in the room. 3-4 pods always restocked daily. 4 USB charging ports (total) built into one receptacle on the desk, and on the night stand lamp. Wifi you need to sign in daily. Valet parking only. And once valet is associated with your room, your full duration is immediately charged $45 per day. Do not remove the tag behind the rear view mirror, car key, for valet parking purposes after day 1. Excellent daily cleanup by housekeeping. Biggest gripe was the industrial fan to vent something in the adjacent hotel that's super noisy whenever the patio door is opened. This thing runs most of the time and we keep the patio door closed mostly due to this issue. Can't hear waves breaking on the beach. Pool towels provided per quota 2/person at the pool side towel desk. Coral friendly sunscreen is there with the pump on the towel desk. This sunscreen does not last at all. This is a salt water pool. No chlorine. Deep end just short of 10 feet deep. Starts at 4 feet. Kiddies pool out of commission at my time of visit. Odd kidney shape and flat sides. Adjacent to the kiddy pool has a sitting step. It's sort of tilted toward the pool so you are constantly sliding into the pool. Tiny hot tubs (only visited the hot one. One hot, the other normal pool temp? Maybe it was broken??) Comfortable capacity of 4 in one tub. Jets were strong in the tub and in the pool. Beach chair all around first come first served for 90% of them and a handful in the back were reservation only. Drink service available and bar right next to the pool. Great little perks are the single layer metal cylinder plastic top with drink hole water bottles provided as a gift as you check in so you could refill them with the water dispensers. One next to the front desk. One next to the stairs to the gym(next to the beach side restaurant), one outside the pool bathroom. Sans bottled water if...

I'm truly looking forward to coming back here and staying for a longer time in the future. From the Aloha greeting at valet ( 2 young gentlmen, Carson rock 🌟 and his team, sorry can't remember the gentleman with the gxsr 🤙), front desk check-in (Thea, Christine and the rest of her team👩‍✈️), & housekeeping (Mahalo for the towels and tissue, as it was greatly appreciated). I can go on forever of how great my stay was here. It felt better than most of my time visiting Las vegas, and even my experiences at a 5 star resort in Cancun, Mexico. Very great first-time experience. This is how you treat people like ohana for those of us who were not born and raised in the great island of Hawaii.

Rooms So, at first, our room had a non-working a/c system on the 4th floor (north side pool view, partial beach view), but when Carson (🌟 bellman/valet) was bringing our luggage up the stairs (elevator was down) we informed him the a/c was not functioning. He attempted to troubleshoot the a/c, but it was not functioning properly. So he called the front desk on our behalf and let them know we needed to change rooms. I felt bad for him because he had to bring our luggage down 4 flights of stairs to the north side room. We we went back to the front desk and spoke to another front desk person and she informed us she could move our room. We decided to remove the $30/night room upgrade charge. I believe Thea felt bad that our room wasn't working as expected, but it was not her fault that the a/c and elevator weren't functioning properly. She was very nice and helpful on our initial check-in. Very nice pinoy lady. The room we received on the 3rd floor (south side) was way roomier, balcony, with pool view, exactly opposite side of the room we were initially given. I really enjoyed the amenities, from the comfortable bed, couch, mini-fridge, and shower area. The complimentary coffee with a keurig machine, 2 glasses for drinks, and 2 souvenir bottles. Great room for a couple to stay.

Service All I know is that Carson 🌟 deserves a promotion and raise. He's an awesome & humble individual. Very hard worker and took care of every need we had requested. Anytime you visit this resort, make sure to be generous with tipping this man and the staff. They will make sure you enjoy your stay, no matter what. He truly made us feel the ohana here and very much welcomed. It's a breath of fresh air to see that people like Carson still exist in this world. 😎 🤙

Location You can't beat it, there was a bit of traffic on Saturday because of the spam festival in the evening, but other than that it was great. We drove most of the east coast, down the center of the island up to the north, down the east coast, across the center of the island to the west, and back down to the resort. Basically, drove the whole island in one day. It was magnificent. I highly recommend renting a Rubicon from Alamo (at the airport). They have great service as well, and it is not that much of a drive from the airport to the hotel. The beach is literally less than 10 feet away from the back of the resort, and you might get lucky and see a 🐢 hanging around.

I hope this is accurately translated from google: "thank you for an amazing stay in Hawaii" "Mahalo nui loa no ka mea he nani loa kāu kipa"

Love you guys. Very blessed for this...