Personality Places : Service-oriented ‘boutique’ hotels in the land of mega-chains

We were sitting in the shade of 100-year-old hau trees on the beach at Waikiki, listening to the thump of surf mixed with laughter and conversation from noonday diners.

“You know, Robert Louis Stevenson sat beneath these very trees,” Steven Boyle said as he motioned with his hand to the leaves above our heads.

Boyle is the general manager of the New Otani Kaimana Beach Hotel; we were lunching at the hotel’s Hau Tree Restaurant, a small, open-air place with pink tablecloths and an owl that makes its home among the hau branches.

The conversation had turned to hotels. When you live in Hawaii, sooner or later, you always get around to hotels. This is because everyone you know eventually decides to visit. “Where’s a great place to stay?” they ask. And I never quite know how to answer.

Over the years, I’ve become fairly familiar with Waikiki hotels. Some are well-known and linked to the history of the islands. The Sheraton Moana Surfrider, built in 1901, was the home for many years of “Hawaii Calls,” the Hawaiian music radio program that began at the Moana on July 3, 1935. The Royal Hawaiian became a famous recreation facility for the U.S. Navy during World War II. Then there are the behemoths, such as the 1,700-room Sheraton Waikiki and the 2,500-room Hilton Hawaiian Village.

In a four-block deep, three-mile stretch by Waikiki’s crescent beach are crammed more than 120 hotel and vacation condo properties. A large percentage of the islands’ visitors pass through them each day. This year, for example, the Hawaii Visitor Bureau is expecting more than 2 million Japanese visitors alone--and almost 95% of them are expected to stay in Waikiki.

This rate of turnover can force a herd experience on guests and make it tough finding something unique, especially for a friend. I was telling this to Boyle when he interrupted and said, “You know, the large hotels are for tourists. The small ones are for travelers. What you’re looking for are boutiques.”

I had never given boutique hotels much thought, especially in my own backyard of Waikiki, but it turns out there are several here that can provide an alternative to the typical stay. And it seems I’d come to the right man for the message. Boyle claims to have invented the boutique concept back in 1983, when he was doing a management study for the New Otani Hotel chain out of Japan, which was in the process of purchasing the Kaimana at the time.

“I got to thinking about how an innkeeper is--or should be--like a small shop owner. He pays attention to everything that’s going on in his shop. He gives it his personal attention and tries to make everything special. That’s what a boutique is. I decided I’d try to turn the Kaimana into a kind of ‘boutique’ for hotel guests . . . . When I got the go-ahead, we began to market the Kaimana along these lines. We called ourselves a boutique.”

Boyle’s origination claims aside, the concept of boutique hotels began gaining popularity in the 1980s and is now an accepted niche in the hotel market. The idea also caught on in Europe and has become a growing trend in the hotel industry worldwide.

What a boutique hotel aims to do is provide an intimate, elegant feel with over-the-top service. For example, the Kaimana’s employee-to-guest ratio is almost three employees to every guest. Usually boutiques are small--less than 150 rooms (Kaimana has 124)--although the boutique concept is now being adopted to the larger 200- and 300-room properties. They cater to upscale travelers looking for special hideaways, businessmen and women tired of Hilton and Sheraton overnighters, honeymooners, and those who, as Boyle succinctly described, think of themselves as travelers rather than tourists.

And boutique rates--at least in Waikiki--are surprisingly reasonable. For example, the 1,232-room Hyatt Regency Waikiki has five floors reserved for its Regency Club guests, who enjoy such “boutique” services as a floor concierge, a lounge and free continental breakfast. Price for an ocean-view room on a Regency Club floor is $430 (about average for big hotels with these special floors). An ocean-view room at the boutique Alana Waikiki, for example, goes for $180.

Today, the New Otani Kaimana Beach Hotel is one of Waikiki’s best spots. Located beneath the slopes of Diamond Head and just across from Waikiki’s largest public park, the Kaimana often fills up throughout the year.

A good example of its style is the Hau Tree Restaurant, where we were enjoying a luncheon of mushroom soup and Caesar salad. The restaurant’s beach-side location and outstanding menu has made it a staple, not only for hotel guests but for local residents taking their mainland visitors out for a Hawaiian dining experience.

The Kaimana is located on San Souci Beach, a part of Waikiki. The current hotel was built in 1964 on the site of the original Sans Souci Hotel, where Robert Louis Stevenson stayed in September 1893. After I left the Kaimana I walked down Waikiki along the park, past Honolulu Zoo, until I came to a part of the beach known as Prince Kuhio, the favorite hangout for surfers and tourists alike. Kuhio is where Waikiki really begins, with all its tourist shops and sun worshipers.

Just across Kalakaua Avenue (the main beach drag through Waikiki) are the brightly polished, brass-rimmed doors of the Aston Waikiki Beachside Hotel. If you don’t look sharply you’ll miss it, it’s so unassuming. But inside, it’s a different story.

Walking into the Waikiki Beachside Hotel is like stepping into an antique French music box. Well, not quite French, since much of the interior is reminiscent of a Chinese porcelain shop. Then there are the Italian stone lions that guard the stairway up to the lounge area.

The Beachside is a far cry from the little Surfside Hotel it was for many years, where West Coast college students, coming over for the summer “coed season” could flop for $35 a night and hang their wet bathing suits out on the lanai railings.

In 1991, the Aston Corp., a local outfit that owns almost an entire block of Waikiki hotels surrounding the Beachside, decided to turn the 79-room hotel into a boutique. They called in Max Davis, who runs an interior design company in Honolulu. Davis chose an eclectic design based on the chinoiserie style. Chinoiserie is an ornate, 18th century French design based on Oriental themes. It marries Chinese lacquer and French froufrou. In Hawaii, it seems at home.

Though the Waikiki Beachside’s rooms are small, they don’t feel cramped. Each room has custom-built furniture to match the limited space (such as undersized bed stands to fit the narrow room). The bathrooms, which are so small there is no room for tubs, only showers, were redesigned to use every bit of space.

Many Beachside rooms have ocean views, but some have no windows at all. “I tell people if they want to stay in one of those rooms, just to think of it as an inside cabin on a cruise ship,” says the hotel’s general manager, Donna Wheeler.

With some regret, I traded the cool, quiet interior of the Beachside for the streets of Waikiki and the hot Hawaii sun. After briefly spreading my toes in the sand, it was time for my dinner stop: the Royal Garden at Waikiki.

I was familiar with this place because of its chef. The Royal Garden is a 220-room hotel located on a nondescript Waikiki side street about two blocks away from Kalakaua. Like the Beachside, it was an older property converted by new owners into a boutique hotel. It reopened as the Royal Garden in 1993.

The Royal Garden is significant for its elegant European-style decor and its chef, Nick Sayada. He first made a name for himself in Honolulu a few years ago when, as the head chef of Tom Selleck’s Black Orchid restaurant (now defunct), he created the restaurant’s signature dish, Black and Blue Ahi.

Today, he oversees the Royal Garden’s Cascada, an open-air terrace that looks out over a cascade of water flowing into the hotel’s pool. Sayada specializes in Mediterranean cuisine with an island flair. Besides the ahi, Sayada’s signature dishes at Cascada include eggplant and zucchini souffle and grilled Mongolian lamb chops. And for desert, peach Melba and tiramisu.

From the Royal Garden, it’s a walk of three or four blocks to the Alana Waikiki. With 313 rooms, the Alana is pushing the small-hotel concept. However, it has a feeling of intimacy and comfort that rivals any of the big chains’ “special service” floors. And this is the entire hotel, not just a few floors.

The hotel is a few blocks from the beach by way of the U.S. Army’s Fort DeRussy recreation area. It has all the amenities of larger hotels, including a pool, saunas, gourmet restaurant and a hotel art gallery where local and visiting artists display their works. At Cafe Picasso’s, a restaurant-lounge off the Alana’s main lobby, singer Jimmy Borges holds court Friday and Saturday evenings. Borges, along with accompanist Betty Loo Taylor, is a Waikiki staple. He has been crooning show tunes around town for the past 25 years. Sooner or later, everyone comes in to see Jimmy. Walking back toward the center of Waikiki, I stop by the Waikiki Parc Hotel. It is wedged in between the huge Sheraton Waikiki and the beach-side, five-star Halekulani Hotel. With 298 rooms, the Waikiki Parc is also borderline boutique, but it deserves mention for its first-class food and service coupled with fairly reasonable room rates. (Ocean-view rooms at the Halekulani begin at $395. At the Parc, they begin at $220.)

The Parc is operated by the Halekulani people, and guests get first-class service and first-rate food in the hotel’s Parc Cafe (many Honolulu residents like to eat at the Parc to get Halekulani quality food without the Halekulani price). Even if you’re not staying there, you might want to sample the Parc’s popular Hawaiian buffet at Wednesday and Friday lunch. The room views on the mountain side of the hotel are of parking lots and concrete. But if you get up high enough on the ocean side, you get views of the ocean and, far below, the Halekulani swimming pool with its trademark orchid design painted on the pool bottom.

Last on my list of boutiques is the Waikiki Joy, which is a short walk down Lewers Street from the Parc. Opened in 1989, the Joy was designed as another true boutique. Located on one of Waikiki’s busier side streets, the Joy’s entrance is simply a gate from the sidewalk to a small courtyard, and then an open-air lobby, all in white marble. (There’s a valet to handle your car on the street.)

The Joy’s 94 rooms all feature Jacuzzis and first-rate sound systems (are you listening, rock-and-roll fans?). They’re also soundproofed. As I sampled the espresso at Joy’s small coffee cafe, I thought this would be a good one for the younger set, people who like big speakers and don’t worry too much about the lack of a luxurious lobby.

Two more boutiques I checked out during my stroll through Waikiki are worth mentioning, but are a step down in staffing and service. They’re the Kaulana Kai Hotel and the Coconut Plaza.

The Kaulana Kai is owned and operated by the Royal Garden company. It’s well decorated, but much more cramped than the Royal Garden. There’s virtually no parking. Located on Kuhio Avenue down in the heart of Waikiki, the Kaulana does have a pretty little lobby. All 90 rooms have kitchenettes or full kitchens. There is no restaurant, but a complimentary breakfast is served each morning around the pool, and the rates are reasonable.

The Coconut Plaza is a converted apartment building that overlooks the Ala Wai Canal. It’s on a busy street corner, and the rooms get some traffic noise. It’s also the longest walk to the beach of any of the hotels I checked out. This is another hotel that might appeal to the younger, budget-minded set. There’s no restaurant, but there’s a couple of lovebirds in the lobby and floors are all finished in cool, Spanish tile that’s easy on bare feet.

My tour ended with the Coconut Plaza, but there is a postscript. A few days after completing my boutique crawl, I was writing up my observations when the phone rang. It was a friend from California. I knew what was coming.

“Hey,” he said. “I’ll be in Honolulu a couple of months from now. Where should I stay?”

I smiled. “You know what?” I said. “I might have just what you’re looking for.”

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GUIDEBOOK: Boutiques of Waikiki

The New Otani Kaimana Beach Hotel, 2863 Kalakaua Ave., Honolulu, HI 96815. Room rates: $99 standard, $130 ocean and Waikiki view, up to $590 for two-bedroom suites. Telephone (808) 923-1555 or (800) 356-8264.

Aston Waikiki Beachside Hotel, 2452 Kalakaua Ave., Honolulu, HI 96815. Room rates: $175 standard up to $305 for an ocean view. Tel. (808) 931-2100 or (800) 922-7866.

Royal Garden at Waikiki, 440 Olohana St., Honolulu, HI 96815. Room rates: $120 standard, $150 superior, up to $500 for suites. Tel. (808) 943-0202 or (800) 367-5666.

Alana Waikiki, 1956 Ala Moana Blvd., Honolulu, HI 96815. Room rates: $140 standard, $180 ocean view, $220-$240 suites, up to $2,000 for the Royal Amethyst suite. Tel. (808) 941-7275 or (800) 367-6070.

Waikiki Parc Hotel, 2233 Helumoa Road, Honolulu, HI 96815. Room rates: $160 standard, up to $245 for a deluxe ocean view. Tel. (808) 921-7272 or (800) 422-0450.

Waikiki Joy Hotel, 320 Lewers St., Honolulu, HI 96815. Room rates: $140-$150 standard, up to $225-$240 for a one-bedroom with kitchen. Tel. (808) 923-2300 or (800) 922-7866.

Kaulana Kai Hotel Waikiki, 2425 Kuhio Ave., Honolulu, HI 96815. Room rates: $99 standard studio, $140 one bedroom, up to $250 for suites. Tel. (808) 922-7777 or (800) 367-5666.

Coconut Plaza Hotel, 450 Lewers St., Honolulu, HI 96815. Room rates: $85 standard up to $150 suite with kitchenette. Tel. (808) 923-8828 or (800) 882-9696

--E.K.