BIG ISLAND DELUXE

It’s a warm afternoon on the dry coast of the Big Island. The sun beats down on the hardened old lava flows. The sea crashes on the black rocks. And along the water’s edge, eight hotels are laying the hospitality on thick and raking in revenues from a growing pool of well-paying guests.

At the Hilton Waikoloa Village, a waitress brings me iced tea, then returns a few minutes later to ask if I’d like my ice replenished. “I know it melts fast here,” she says sympathetically. As if I’ve shouldered a heroic burden, taking this seat at an oceanfront table.

A few miles down the coast, the Kona Village Resort ignores lodging industry tradition and lets guests have the soft drinks in their mini-bars for free. Outgoing hotel postcards? The front desk (which after all is collecting $425 or more per night per couple for room and meals) will buy the stamps.

At the Four Seasons Hualalai, my room-service breakfast is the most expensive such meal I’ve had in my life--$54. But the front desk is happy to make 10 photocopies for me, no charge.

At the beachfront bar of the Mauna Kea, a seasoned bartender named Jim delivers his well-honed patter to a circle of customers as the sun sinks low.

“Guy walks into a bar with a dog . . .” Jim begins. Soon he has tossed out half a dozen guy-walks-into-a-bar jokes, the bar is awash in laughter, and Jim has moved on to Heaven gags (“OK, three truckers die and go to Heaven . . .”). He’s so smooth, you hardly notice the mai tais are $7.03 each.

A person could get used to these luxuries, and despite nightly room rates that average nearly $200 and frequently surpass $450, many Big Island visitors apparently are. Over the last two years, the area known as the Kona-Kohala Coast has emerged as one of the most popular high-end resort neighborhoods in the Hawaiian Islands. At such prices, a little extra service is an expected part of the package, along with unusually spacious rooms, stylish design and effortless access to sun and sea. And with so many different lodgings vying for attention, a visitor here can glimpse eight different hoteliers’ visions of what a resort paradise ought to be.

Earlier this year, I came to see how the new and improved hotels compare with each other. After five days of inspecting, eavesdropping, eating and sleeping (at the Mauna Kea Beach, Kona Village Resort and Four Seasons hotels--I hung out and ate in the other five), I liked the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel most.

This was in part because it has the island’s most inviting beach, and in part because of the priceless Asian art collection casually strewn about the hotel, but mostly because the service was top-notch and the whole scene was so unabashedly retro. Imagine walking into a life-size diorama illustrating what it was like to be rich in Hawaii in 1965.

I was also greatly intrigued by the Kona Village Resort, a strange marriage of the rustic and the luxurious that comes closer to the atmosphere of deeper Polynesia--Bora Bora, say, or Moorea--than any place else I’ve found on the Hawaiian Islands. If I came back with kids along, however, I’d head straight for the Hilton Waikoloa Village and all its shameless, child-pleasing amusements, from its milelong monorail to its swim-with-a-dolphin program.

The hotel I understood least was the newest and priciest of them all, the Four Seasons Hualalai, which has dazzling guest rooms and facilities but a virtually unswimmable beach. My thumbs-down puts me out of step with a few glossy magazines and several hundred affluent travelers who have kept Hualalai’s occupancy rates remarkably high so far. But I’m not quite alone. When Andrew Harper’s Hideaway Report, a monthly newsletter aimed at wealthy executives, made similar rounds of these hotels in March, its critic rated the Mauna Kea No. 1, followed by the Mauna Lani, with the Four Seasons “a distant and disappointing third.”

How did this escalation of luxury begin? Three years ago, tourist traffic on the Kona-Kohala Coast was piddling compared to the crowds headed for Oahu and Maui. Even for much of the go-go ‘80s, the Big Island’s hotel occupancy rates ran 10 or more points behind other islands. Ritz-Carlton and Hyatt came and went. The distinction between exclusive and lonely was getting difficult to see.

But since 1994, the splashy new Four Seasons and the Hapuna Beach Prince Hotel have opened, and four other hotels have had large-scale renovations: the Hilton Waikoloa Village, the Mauna Kea, the Kona Village and most recently the Mauna Lani. Maybe most crucially, in June 1996, air service to the island’s nearby Keahole-Kona Airport expanded on two fronts: United Airlines added a daily nonstop flight from Los Angeles, and Japan Airlines started landing three times weekly, the first service from Asia directly to a Hawaiian island other than Oahu.

Driven by those developments, and the general upsurge in American consumer confidence, arrivals to the Big Island in 1996 were up 13.3% over the year before, a rate of tourism growth that doubled figures for the stagnant state of Hawaii as a whole. And in the first six months of this year, as tourism to Waikiki, Maui and Kauai has sagged, figures from accounting firm PKF Consulting show Kona-Kohala occupancy rates have soared from 62.7% to 69.2%. Over the same time, the average room rate grew from $175.73 to $199.57.

Not surprisingly, the famous and the rich are among those footing these bills. Bruce Willis and Demi Moore have been spotted lying low at the Four Seasons, and Pepsi’s poo-bahs have recently named the Hilton as headquarters for a 150th-anniversary corporate conference in January that is said to include 7,000 attendees. When Conde Nast Traveler magazine polled about 6,000 golfers in June, Big Island courses were among their 10 favorites in the world: the Orchid (No. 2), the Mauna Lani (No. 6), and the Mauna Kea (No. 9).

Together, the eight hotels listed here offer about 3,700 rooms, suites and thatched Polynesian-style bungalows known as hales (pronounced HAH-lays); 64 tennis courts; and seven golf courses. I’ve reviewed the hotels in my order of preference.

Mauna Kea Beach Hotel

Step into the Mauna Kea, and first you confront an 18th century Thai gold-leaf kneeling figure. Then blue tile floors (to echo the sea), beige concrete walls (to echo the sand) and a wide view of a crescent beach, animated by distant bodysurfers. As I approached the desk, two men stood at a rail above the view, chatting and forming a silhouette that might be placed in an encyclopedia beside the phrase “captains of industry.”

The hotel’s setup is vertical, with six levels on a hillside above that tremendous beach, and distinction blurred between indoors and outdoors. Hundreds of works of art, tucked in corners and hung on walls throughout the property, were collected under the direction of Laurance Rockefeller, whose company, rockresorts, built the hotel. The Mauna Kea feels like a campus with the ultimate endowment: Rockefeller millions and the best location on the Big Island.

Rockresorts sold the hotel in 1978 and it’s now managed by the Westin chain (and owned by Seibu Railway Ltd., which also owns the Prince next door). The Mauna Kea’s old orange theme color was toned down in the renovation of 1994-96, but the ‘60s vintage and design sensibility endure. In my room, 1641, there were a pair of wicker chairs, a teak bed stand, modular counter and desk, all suggesting a time when Lyndon Johnson was president and the hotel was nearly alone on this coast. I had no television (although they’ll bring one if you ask).

I do have quibbles: Many of the standard bathrooms have just one sink (the newer big island hotels generally have double sinks) and a combined shower and bath, which seems a bit dated and crowded.

And unless you’re in the hotel on a Thursday, you can’t get a tour of the hotel’s artwork, or even a map or brochure for a self-guided tour. For about $50, there is a hardback book available in the gift shop, but someone spent millions to gather up this distinctive collection, and now nobody’s spending the couple of thousand I would guess it would take to let guests appreciate it fully. (All that artwork, and the generally grown-up atmosphere, may make this a more comfortable place for adults than young children.)

But mostly, all was serene. Despite its rooms being just about full, the hotel’s public areas always seemed calm. The formal restaurant, Batik (entrees $28 to $43), requires that men wear jackets, an extreme measure on an island where a shirt with collar generally passes for formal wear. Down on the sand, the beach umbrellas are turquoise and hotel staffers hand out orange beach towels--yielding a scene whose content was utterly luxurious, but whose colors led me to thoughts of Howard Johnson. Now there’s a name with no business is this neighborhood!

Mauna Kea Beach Hotel, tel. (800) 882-6060 or (808) 882-7222, fax (808) 880-3142. Opened in 1965; closed in 1994 for an 18-month, minimum $35-million renovation; reopened in January, 1996. Brochure rates: $295 and up per double.

Kona Village Resort

My welcome drink came in a plastic cup, a wee letdown after the ceramic mug at the Four Seasons. But I got over it. The Kona Village has been at this a long time and has a strong sense of itself.

The site covers 82 acres, most of it is built on an 1801 lava flow. Yet with only 125 rooms it’s got the most limited guest population on the coast. And it’s the only hotel here you could call genuinely eccentric. The hales are designed according to traditions of various Pacific island groups, and many are arrayed around a lagoon.

The style is the most rough-hewn of the Kona-Kohala Coast hotels--thatched roofs, ceiling fans, no TVs, no telephones--but my room had been nearly rebuilt from the ground up in the last renovation, and felt simultaneously new and well-broken in. Unfinished blond wood walls, glass walls in the shower, high wood ceiling. I was 15 yards from water’s edge, with one other hut between me and the ocean. I had a bathtub view of purple bougainvillea in the foreground, backed by a black lava plain, then the low, green slopes of Mauna Kea beyond.

The guest room doors have locks, but keys are issued only if you ask for them, which I sensed would be unhip. There is no room service for most guests. If you want the maid to leave you alone, you put a DO NOT DISTURB coconut in front of your door. And if you feel tempted to whip out your cellular phone, first consider the bulletin-board notice that “many of our guests come here to escape phones and cellular phones or even the thought of them. If you must use a cellular phone, please do so in the privacy of your hale so that other guests will not be disturbed.”

White peacocks stroll about, part of a resident bird population, just as ducks often stroll through the nearby Bora Bora bar. A 10-foot-tall wooden tiki figure, carved by Marquesans, stands nearby, and guests hang their leis on it, so that most evenings the tiki man seems to be wearing a grass and flower skirt.

Beside the lagoon on Friday nights, the hotel offers the best luau on the island, a feast that includes island sweet potatoes, steamed taro, fresh crab, poi, Hawaiian-style barbecued pig and hula dancing. The price for non-guests is $66.50 each. But don’t expect much night life here. Even on Friday, the torches in the Bora Bora bar go out at 11 p.m.

As the meal-inclusive price policy suggests, management expects guests to do a lot of lazing around on the scene. The beach is not as good as the Mauna Kea’s, but does the job. There’s a pool for adults and one for children, although neither is particularly large. Snorkeling equipment is free, as are kayaks. Dominant mood: somnolence.

Kona Village Resort, tel. (800) 367-5290 or (808) 325-5555, fax (808) 325-5124. Opened in 1965, brushed up with an $8.8 million renovation, including a new fitness center, in December 1996. Brochure rates: $425 and up, including three meals daily for two and transportation to and from airport.

Hilton Waikoloa Village

Here’s the epicenter of energy on the coast, maybe on the entire island. In the lobby, birds screech, children laugh, Japanese tour groups convene and Chinese vases tower 8 feet high. Just beyond whirs a monorail that carries guests to rooms, restaurants and other attractions, including a network of swimming pools featuring caves, waterfalls and Jacuzzis.

I’d never come here on a honeymoon, but if you have children, here is a place to keep everyone amused. The Dolphin Encounter, an up-close experience that is one of the hotel’s biggest draws, costs $85 per adult, $130 per couple, $45 to $65 for kids. Twelve mahogany boats meander back and forth on a canal paralleling the monorail.

The 1,241 rooms are low-key, with lots of beige. Televisions, yes; thatched roofs, no. In November the hotel completed a $15-million renovation. Drawback: the hotel’s own shoreline is rocky. Most guests use the Royal Waikoloan’s beach next door.

Predominant mood: festive. When I lunch at the Kamuela Provision Company (lunch entrees $15 to $22), my iced tea, delivered by that ice-conscious waitress, comes fully loaded: mint leaves, lemon slice, straw, bamboo swizzle stick, and a blue plastic sword. All it lacked was a parrot.

Hilton Waikoloa Village, tel. (800) HIL-TONS or (808) 885-1234, fax (808) 886-2902. Opened in 1988 as a Hyatt, taken over by Hilton in 1993. Brochure rates: $225 and up per double.

Mauna Lani

This is the only Big Island hotel that gets five diamonds from AAA, and its reputation for warm service is widespread. A recent hotel newsletter noted than 80 employees had been at the hotel since its opening 14 years ago. Kevin Costner resided for several months in a Mauna Lani bungalow during the making of “Waterworld,” and the word is that while most of Pepsi’s executives are celebrating the company’s 150th anniversary at the Hilton Waikoloa in January, the uppermost echelon will be billeted here.

The buildings are arranged to maximize ocean views, and interiors are full of Hawaiian touches, including rattan and teak in rooms, with koi ponds outside. (The hotel also sponsors a release of baby turtles every summer.) Guests at the Mauna Lani--or its neighbor hotel, the Orchid--can play at the affiliated Francis H. I’i Brown golf courses for $85 to $90 per 18 holes; non-guests pay $160 to $170. The Mauna Lani, which prides itself on an inventive Pacific Rim menu, stages an annual Cuisines of the Sun food conference. During my February visit, the severe geometry of the building’s 1983 design--and the cascading water display by the lobby stairs in particular--was beginning to look dated. But since then, the hotel had closed for a $10-million “refreshment.” It reopened Aug. 1.

Mauna Lani Bay Hotel & Bungalows, tel. (800) 327-8585 or (808) 885-6622, fax (808) 885-1484. Brochure rates: $275 and up.

Four Seasons Hualalai

Have the photographers from Architectural Digest arrived yet? This is that kind of place, and if you’re looking for the most handsome guest room interior on the Big Island, this is where you should come. Style. Spaciousness. Also, many golfers will surely like the idea of playing its exclusive Jack Nicklaus-designed course.

On arrival, they give you a lei, a fruit drink and a cool towel. Voices are soft; room service is 24 hours; horseplay around the pools is inconceivable. My room, 3404, had handsome (but itchy) coir carpet, slate and wood flooring, mahogany and rattan furniture, a view of the 18th hole, an indoor-outdoor shower with two glass walls and its own lava-walled courtyard.

Outside the rooms, one of the four swimming pools is set in volcanic rock and filled with brackish water. (That’s a good thing: it’s a mix of fresh and saltwater that sustains sea life and snorkeling.) Another “horizon” pool is designed so that its edge seems to spill directly into the sea. A separate kid’s pool is for wading and has a sandy bottom.

In the hotel’s fancy restaurant, Pahui’a, the cuisine has Asian and Hawaiian overtones and dinner entrees run $19 to $32 (I liked the Dungeness crab cake and the carrot and ginger soup). At the Hualalai Club Grille, they make an admirable pizza with Portuguese sausage, pineapple and macadamia nuts.

There is an interpretive center where ukulele lessons are offered and local art is shown. And there’s the golf course, open only to guests at $105 for 18 holes. There’s a well-outfitted health club, and a seawater area that’s walled off from the rough surf for safety.

But the bottom line is that this hotel has a crummy beach. It’s too dangerous to bodysurf, and there’s not much room to lie down either. And consider these room-service breakfast rates: $7.75 for granola, $11.75 for fruit, $9 for a large pot of coffee, $6.25 for orange juice, a $3 delivery fee and a mandatory 18% service charge.

How many seasoned travelers will want to spend that, on top of $450 a night (or more) on a Hawaiian shorefront hotel with an unswimmable beach?

As nearly as I can tell, if you stay here, you’re really paying $350 a night for the service and amenities, and $100 more for the comfort of knowing that most of the uncouth world will be excluded.

Four Seasons Resort Hualalai, tel. (800) 332-3442 or (808) 325-8000, fax (808) 325-8200. Opened September 1996. Brochure rates: $450 and up.

Hapuna Beach Prince

Hapuna is one of the island’s most popular beaches, drawing many locals on weekends, and this hotel is well-positioned to exploit it. Another advantage is its relationship with its elder sibling, the Mauna Kea, at the other end of the beach. Guests at either hotel can sign for expenses at the hotels’ combined 10 restaurants, eight shops and seven lounges. (Both hotels’ guests pay $80 to $90 per 18-hole round to play the two adjacent golf courses; non-guests pay $130 to $150.)

I didn’t feel entirely spoiled here; for instance, the Prince requires that guests sign for beach towels, a bother not imposed at the Four Seasons or Kona Village Resort. But I did feel up-to-date. The design is modern--lots of circles and curves--and guest rooms include slate floors, blond wood, separate shower and tub.

Islanders say the hotel is particularly popular with Japanese travelers, who fill half the rooms on some nights, giving the property a more international flavor than its neighbors. (Hence the seaweed option in the Ocean Terrace breakfast buffet.)

Hapuna Beach Prince Hotel, tel. (800) 882-6060 or (808) 880-1111, fax (808) 880-3200. Brochure rates: $325 and up.

The Orchid

Here’s a pleasant but odd place. At the entry, a crystal chandelier hung (like an overdressed Ritz-Carlton ghost) above a koa wood bowl on a table. Similarly, Hawaiian quilts lined the walls in some ground-floor hallways, but when I turned the corner toward the meeting rooms, I was suddenly among silk wall coverings and more crystal chandeliers. Is it formal or is it native?

Further, instead of positioning as many rooms as possible to have a glimpse of the sea, as most of its neighbors have done, the Orchid has arranged many rooms to look down on its central courtyard of pools and landscaping.

Still, the Orchid’s facilities are impressive, from the handsome Orchid Court restaurant to the “CENTRE FOR WELLBEING” (spa) to the several shops selling high-end jewelry and crystal. In the Paniolo Lounge is a game room with koa wood paneling and two snooker tables.

Here, too, much of the shoreline is uninviting for swimmers, except for a sandy lagoon area that’s perfect for children but confining for adults. At Brown’s Beach House, one of three restaurants (entrees $12.50 to $19.50), I had a $7 chocolate macadamia nut tart that looked better than it tasted.

The Orchid at Mauna Lani, tel. (800) 845-9905 or (808) 885-2000, fax (808) 885-5778. Opened in 1990 as a Ritz-Carlton, re-christened and renovated in 1996; now part of the ITT Sheraton Luxury Collection. Brochure rates: $265 and up. (Guests over 55 years old get 25% off if they stay at least three nights.)

Royal Waikoloan

Here is the black sheep of the family. The Royal Waikoloan Hotel does, however, deserve two kinds of attention: from travelers who want to sleep in this neighborhood for less than $150 (with a AAA card or business card, you can often get a $108 rate); and from a new owner who will better exploit the property’s potential. For now, it is a frayed, faded 1981 hotel managed by the Outrigger chain, widely reported to be up for sale. Bingo and darts games are staged. Architecturally . . . if the builders of LAX had put up a resort hotel, this would be it.

But the Royal Waikoloan’s grounds are spacious, and it shares the Kings’ and Beach golf courses with the Hilton. (Guests at either hotel pay $85 to play 18 holes; non-guests pay $120.) It also has one of the island’s best beaches, with white sands, a gentle, lapping tide and just enough windsurfers, catamarans and sunbathers to make it seem cheerful but not crowded. In fact, the nearby Hilton directs many of its guests to this beach, either by free shuttle bus or on foot.

The Royal Waikoloan, tel. (800) 688-7444 or (808) 885-6789, fax (808) 886-7852. Brochure rates: $135 and up.

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GUIDEBOOK

Island Possibilities

Getting there: United Airlines has the only nonstop service from the Big Island from LAX; lowest restricted, advance-purchase round-trip fare is $268, from Aug. 25 to Oct. 31. Hawaiian, American, Delta, Northwest and Continental fly to Honolulu, where you must change planes to get to Kona.

Hotel rates: All the increased popularity of Big Island resorts notwithstanding, travelers should not be misled by the inflated prices these hotels put on their brochures. Like hotels throughout the U.S., they toss those prices out to take advantage of naive, free-spending guests who never ask about the discounts or packages that can reduce costs substantially. An ongoing special at the Hapuna Beach Prince Hotel, for instance, reduces the cheapest room rates from $325 to $195. The Orchid at Mauna Lani’s published rates begin at $265 nightly, but as an incentive between now and Oct. 31, the hotel will give guests $50 per night, per room, in credit toward other hotel services, including meals. Similarly, guests who stay at least three nights in a $370-per-night room at the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel generally qualify for a “Splash” package that gives them $100 per room per day in hotel-services credit.

Good deals are also available through companies such as package-tour companies (Pleasant Hawaiian Holidays is the biggest) that work through travel agents, selling air fares and lodgings together for a single price.