Wailea Beach Resort - Marriott, Maui — Hotel in Maui

A Beautiful Property with Serious Service Shortcomings

My family of 5 spent Spring Break at the Grand Wailea from 3/15/25 to 3/22/25 with two basic adjoining oceanview rooms. While there were parts of the resort that we enjoyed, the overall experience left a lot to be desired.

The Good:

Beautiful Location: The resort sits in an absolutely stunning beachfront location with expansive ocean views, making it the perfect backdrop for a relaxing vacation. The grounds are lush, beautifully landscaped, and well-maintained.

Cleanliness: The property itself was spotless, and our rooms were clean and comfortable. Housekeeping did a great job.

Luau: One highlight of our trip was the Luau at the Grand Wailea. While it was pricey (over $1200 for our family), the food was exceptional and the performance was both fun and engaging.

Pools: There are many pools on the property which offer a variety of options for the whole family, from relaxing to more active areas. My kids enjoyed the water slides (when they were operational).

The Bad:

Costs at every corner! I hate feeling like someone always has their hand in my pocket, and I feel just violated by the Waldorf. Everything costs extra. The mandatory daily “resort fee” of $50 per room primarily covers access to the pools. During the first few days, many of the water slides were out of commission due to long ignored wear, which left us feeling like we were paying for something that wasn’t being delivered. The resort also makes sure to charge you for everything – from renting beach chairs ($100) to using the activity room for kids ($15), to getting a microwave for your room (an extra $50). It felt like there was always another charge lurking around the corner. I already paid you over $13,000 for two basic hotel rooms! Isn't that enough?

Pool Chair Madness: The pool chair situation is nothing short of ridiculous. Guests begin lining up at pool entrances as early as 6:30 AM. At 7:00 AM, it turns into chaos as guests scramble over rope barriers and race to throw towels onto chairs to claim them. We actually witnessed two separate fist fights over chair claims, which was completely unacceptable for a resort of this caliber. It felt more like a Carnival cruise line experience. To avoid this madness, you can rent a cabana – but they’ll set you back $1200-$1500 per day.

Expensive Dining: While we expected food to be on the expensive side, the prices were extreme. For example, dinner at the Humuhumunukunukuapua’a restaurant cost our family $600 and was actually the least favorite meal of the entire trip.

Limited Access to Beach Gear & Towels: We were shocked to find that there was no free snorkel gear or non-motorized beach equipment available for guests. Everything had to be rented. Towels were another headache. The towel desk closed at 5 PM, but the pools stay open until 10 PM, leaving us scrambling to find towels after hours. Our first night I finally had to get pool towels from the valet desk (about as far from the pools as you can get)!

The “Water Elevator” and Bike Rental Situation: The resort website boasts about a unique “water elevator,” which we found out has been broken for over three years. We were also excited to use the complimentary beach bikes advertised on the website, but we discovered that only two bikes were available for the entire resort. Two bikes! The rest were “broken and awaiting repair.” There were also two e-bikes available for rent, just adding insult to injury.

Lack of friendly staff: It felt as if nobody cared for our business, nor if guests enjoy their stay. Even the registration desk at check-in gave us no info on the hotel, amenities, or even how to get to our room! Mike at the pool was about the only exception - he was great!

Final Thoughts: While we had an amazing trip to Maui overall, I can confidently say that we will not return. We traveled with two other families who had very similar experiences. The resort’s exorbitant fees, lack of friendly staff, and indifferent service left much...

A beautiful resort in a beautiful place, but a few peeves that could be so easily fixed.||1. Check in||They contact you a week in advance of arrival and ask you when you’re checking in. We were getting there at 2pm. We get the obligatory “we only guarantee your room at 4” response but why ask if you’re not going to try to accommodate? When we arrive, we’re told the room isn’t ready but they will text us when it is. 4pm rolls around and no text. We go to the desk, the room is still unavailable. I say that’s not good enough and so they find us a different room. We get to our room about 4:30, late from the “guaranteed check in” time, not the same as the room we booked and no accommodation for what was not an unreasonable check in time, advised a week in advance. No real effort to apologise or make this up to us.||2. Car park||The self parking was a nightmare because the swipe card for the car park never worked ever. It wouldn’t work going in to the car park, it wouldn’t work going out of the carpark. You’d go and get it reprogrammed and it would work once and then fail again. Every time you pressed the buzzer to contact them they were bemused that this could ever happen. They charge USD49 per night for the privilege of self-parking. At that price you deserve an access card that works.||3. Room keys||They give you wrist bands for your room key. That’s great because you can use the pool and swim and not worry. But like the carpark access card, it’s one of those room keys that works on your actual room door about once in every 10 tries. It gets tiresome when you’re paying around USD1000 a night all up, to have to spend about a minute hoping that if you hold your wrist band a certain way your very expensive room might be available to you. Must do better here.||4. Housekeeping||There’s no ability to signal with a sign or anything when you want your room made up so you are at the mercy of the attendant. Our attendant decided to come between 4pm and 6pm every day. That’s very late in the day and a long time to spend with old towels and bedding. You should be able to signal you want an early room refresh, or they should just come at a reasonable time.||5. Food||For a resort this expensive you’d expect the food to be amazing. It was bland and often not that well prepared. The lobby bar is a mobile cart and only has cans of beer available, nothing on tap. The pizza truck serves pretty average pizza and the pool service food was cold when it arrived, bland and disappointing. Again, not what you expect for the price.||These peeves aside, the pools are beautiful and the location is stunning. But these peeves shouldn’t exist in a place where you’re paying these kind of prices.||We would be back, but I’d really hope not to have these experiences again. I’m pretty surprised I have to say that people who pay this kind of money put...

My wife and three children stayed at the Wailea Marriott for 5 nights. Overall the property is very nice and well maintained with great views especially at sunset. There are activities for the kids as well as an arcade and great green space to run around. The shuttle service is nice to get around Wailea and it is also very easy to walk to the Shops just at the top of the road. The kids pool is fun and pools are all nice but smaller – there Is not an expansive lazy river style pool that some other properties on the island offer. The staff were all friendly and helpful. The onsite Starbucks was a nice benefit. ||Other reviewers have mentioned this property seems to want to be an elevated brand to justify the cost per room, resort fee, and cost of food and beverage they are charging. As Platinum Elite I have stayed at lots of standard Marriott resorts and this is exactly that. The poolside food was not good – Frozen chicken fingers and frozen onion rings. The drinks were standard Marriott poolside drinks – nothing elevated or curated. The cocktails were $23 in a throwaway plastic cup. The Humble Market restaurant and the pizza truck both Roy Yamaguchi were very good and they described themselves as not managed by the hotel. ||As we were traveling with 5 we were informed that we could not stay in a regular double queen room with rollaway and had to purchase a second room. This is the only time I have experienced this before at a Bonvoy property. They said it was because of fire code though it is possible to stay with 5 in the Residence Inn up the road. Our Junior Suite in the tower was very large – much larger than any Residence Inn room I have stayed in – square footage wise I am not sure the code here, but they do seem very firm on this rule and did give me a discount on the second room. ||The $57 resort fee is high and we were not able to get chairs at the beach because they were all full and not able to join the fitness classes because they were all full. If a property is going to have that high of a fee then the amenities need to be available because as a guest we are paying for them! We did not have a car during this portion of the trip but the very high $65 parking was talked about by some of the guests -- the garage is directly next to the shops parking lot so some said they just said they had no car and parked there. ||Overall I would stay here again on points as the grounds and views really were what is memorable about this resort that has been a staple of Wailea for many...