Lahaina Shores Beach Resort — Hotel in Maui

My wife and I had the pleasure of staying here on our honeymoon (in 2014). We got in late at night but pulled up to the entrance and the lobby looked really nice. Clean, well lit and nothing over the top. The man at the front desk help us with getting the keys and giving some basic info. All the while, you could hear the ocean in the background. We got our things and went to the room. Our room was facing the ocean on the 4th floor. The back slider to the lanai was open and you could again hear the waves breaking. Our room was completely clean and big enough for 2 people. It was set up as a hotel room would be but we also had a full kitchen with full size appliances. The bathroom was also large and nice!

When we got up the next day, we woke to a breathtaking view of the beach and ocean just a stones throw off our lanai. The blue water was almost as blue and endless as the sky. You could see Lanai in the distance and on some days, a cruise ship was parked out behind us to add to the picturesque scenery.

The pool and hot tub were big enough for the amount of people that were generally down there. One thing my wife and I really liked was that there were not tons of people like you get at the bigger resorts. At any given time, there may have only been 15 people at the pool area. Most of which were older couples who were friendly. There is also a grill down by the pool area that we used once or twice. Not many people used it while we were there but it was plenty big if multiple people wanted to use it at the same time.

The beach is literally 30 yards from the lobby. Again, another awesome part with this place is the lack of people around. The beach is a few hundred yards long until it slips back into rocky coast. This may sound small but Lahaina Shores is the only hotel/condo on it. There is a public beach access but there was hardly anyone who ever used it as you don't really know it's there. There are also a couple restaurants that back up to it including one of the luaus. If you like looking for beach glass, this beach is perfect because there are so few people who walk it. We came back with a lot... Enough that you could fill a snack size ziplock bag. Another nice part to the beach is there is an old dead coral about 100 or so yards off the shore. This is nice because it acts as a wave break so you don't get hammered at the shoreline. Just be careful if you are snorkeling around it as it's easy to get pushed into the coral when the tide is going out.

We also liked that it had a laundry area on site. LS is within walking distance to the downtown area and we would walk there quite often at night and feel totally safe. We even walked to the Old Lahaina Luau from here but keep in mind, that's about a mile long walk so may not be suggested if you don't feel up to walking that long. We had a Jeep Wrangler for our rental car and really the only thing that we didn't care for was the parking garage we had to park in. It's immediately next door so it's not a long walk and there were always open spaces, it was just that the spaces were so close together that a number of times we joked we may need to exit through the trunk. The other thing with it is its a very short parking garage. Our jeep seems to just barely fit. Recently when visit Maui again we had a Nissan Pathfinder which was too tall to fit in there. They do have a clearance bar before entering, thankfully.

All in all we really enjoyed our stay here and would rate it 100% satisfied and even beyond satisfied. When we were back in Maui most recently, we were traveling with more people and stayed at a larger two bedroom condo in Kaanapali at a resort. We liked that and agreed is was nice for the number of people and the living room but also felt if it was just the two of us, we would definitely stay at Lahaina...

Owner Carmen Karady

I stayed at the above property in late December

Along with the rental fees, I paid a cleaning fee of $150 and a damage security deposit of $150.

The owner will not refund my damage security deposit for what boils down to "leaving the place a mess".

I have tried in good faith to work this out with the owner as she sited that we did not take the sheets off the bed nor empty the trash as our only "real" breaches of the agreement. I have offered to pay an additional cleaning fee (above the $150 for these two items) but cannot possibly we worth the entire $150 deposit she is withholding.

In the end there was NO damage, just cleanliness and we paid to have the unit cleaned in any case.

The root of the problem was with the clothes washer, it had problems during my stay and on the check-out day as we were packing up, the space where the washer was installed had water on the floor. I immediately went to the phone in the unit and pushed the "maintenance" button; I could not reach anyone but left a detailed message.

A day or two prior to this, maintenance had to come to the unit because there was water in the unit below us (we did not initiate the call) and they were looking for the source of the water leak. I linked the prior even with the standing water I noticed on check out day ALONG with the fact that the phone had MAINTENANCE push-button on it an immediately called maintenance.

After we checked out, I can only assume that maintenance came into the unit because the report from the owner stated we left 4 bags of wet/dirty laundry and it looked like we had jimmied the door upon on the washer (it is a front load unit that locks when running).

I tried to explain several times that we in fact left almost no laundry and where doing a load of whites when we left to assist the cleaning crew.

I can only imagine that the maintenance crew (based on the prior visit's problems) took every available towel and bed sheet to sop up the water and tried to get the washing machine to shop by forcing the door open.

I asked several times that she verify my story with maintenance and to back up that I had no part the problems with the washing machine and in fact my family was inconvenienced with the problems (we had maintenance in our unit on Christmas Day). I do not wish to complain about the problems with the unit but am trying to reflect a cooperative nature.

As the discussions evolved with the owner the "damage" to the washing machine seemed to go away and I asked for specific reasons she withheld my deposit and the only thing she could come up with that is tangible is that I did not take the sheets off the bed and did not take the trash out.

I would argue that when paying a $150 cleaning fee, I did not expect to do ANY cleaning but if in fact that is what the agreement said than I am more than willing to compensate the cleaning crew for the extra 10 minutes of work that those two activities required but the owner is just plain being unreasonable.

I also intend to lodge a complaint with the local better business bureau on this topic. I also intend to post this information on the VRBO site, Trip Advisor as well as any other travel related...

We had a fantastic stay at Lahaina Shores. We booked through Costco travel and stayed here for a week in November. Like any place you have your pros and cons, and for this hotel, my cons are merely for the sake of argument, and I’ll be the first to admit I’m really nitpicking here. But for what it’s worth (which isn’t much) here goes:

Cons:

– The hotel had an isolated feel to it at times. The pool and beach were often fairly empty (not always though, I guess it all depends on what time of year you go and who’s staying at the hotel that week). I’m sure for lots of people this is ideal. However for someone like me, and this is purely a personal preference, I prefer a little more action, I love to people watch, so if you fall in that category, then this hotel isn’t the best place for that.

– The hotel beach was on the narrow side and the ocean was shallow and rocky (don’t even think of going too far out without water shoes), but if you’re willing to walk far enough out in the water you can do some beginner snorkeling (I was even able to swim along a sea turtle one day WOO HOO!). Anyway, if you’re looking to do a LOT of swimming/snorkeling/ride waves, you won’t be able to do much of that that here.

– Hotel in general is dated. I personally didn’t even notice (apparently my wife did right away, but she watches HGTV all the time ha-ha) until we visited a couple of other hotels over on Ka'anapali. When we got back to Lahaina Shores I definitely realized at that point, oh yes, this place could definitely use a facelift.

Pros:

Location, location, location! Besides the obvious of being right on the ocean, right next store is a little shopping center including a general store that had the basic food essentials and a couple of little restaurants, and then if you walked a few minutes on Front Street you had an endless choice of restaurants and shops to choose from. Definitely loved walking up and down Front Street every evening.

Having a kitchen in the unit was fantastic! Eating out in Maui can get extremely expensive, so being able to make breakfast in the room every morning, and an occasional lunch, was a great way to save a penny here and there.

That view…OH THAT VIEW!!!!!! We had an ocean view room and it was absolutely STUNNING!! If you can afford it, definitely spring for it. Every morning we woke up and looked out that window it truly felt like we were in paradise. Worth every single penny for that alone.

All in all we would without question stay here again in a heartbeat! The pros significantly outweighed the cons in our book. The staff we dealt with were all delightful and courteous, the grounds were well kept, and the views obviously speak for themselves....