Hawaii on Sale (sort of)

At the front desk of a Sheraton last month, I asked for a rate sheet because I wanted to know the published price of a room there. Known in the travel industry as a “rack rate,” the tariff printed in a brochure is generally the highest price a hotel charges. The clerk frowned and told me to wait, rooted around in a cabinet, then walked down the long, curving counter and consulted a colleague.

When she returned, she said, “I’m sorry, we don’t have one.”

“Then can you tell me the rack rates?” I asked.

“The rack rates don’t exist since the World Trade Center,” she said.

I doubt this is Sheraton’s official line. But it was just what I wanted to hear as I began a quest for bargain room rates in Hawaii.

The time was ripe. With fewer people traveling in the aftermath of Sept. 11 and Hawaii tourism down more than 27% in November compared with the previous year, hotels and resorts seemed certain to be going begging--and thus might be ready to deal.

But the results of my search for deals were as mixed as a good mai tai. On Waikiki it was a wide-open playing field for bargain hunters. But on the Big Island and Maui, hotels were generally reluctant to haggle, although they were amenable to selling me a nicer room at a discounted price.

I got ocean-view or partial ocean-view rooms in the three hotels where I stayed during my five-day scouting trip at deep discounts--about two-thirds of the brochure rate at Waikiki’s pink-painted Royal Hawaiian on Oahu and the Outrigger Waikoloa Beach on the Big Island, and half off at the Hyatt Regency Maui.

But other places wouldn’t budge. The price was the price. Period.

To compare rates before I left on the trip, I tracked prices at about a dozen hotels on Waikiki Beach on Oahu, on the Big Island and on Maui, Hawaii’s three most visited islands. I checked Web sites, contacted travel agents and called the hotels’ toll-free reservations lines.

Then, on Dec. 16, I flew to Hawaii to see whether the prices would come down further if I showed up in person. Granted, only adventurers travel without reservations, but I’ve snagged good deals that way in the past.

Success was not assured. I was traveling just before the holidays, when rates all over Hawaii go up. Furthermore, Kimberly Grant, author of “Best Places to Stay Hawaii” (Houghton Mifflin, 1998), told me that Hawaiian hotels aren’t set up to bargain with walk-ins.

And then there is the “rate integrity” factor.

“Rate integrity” means that a hotel quotes the same prices whether guests call an 800 reservations line, contact the hotel directly or show up at the front desk.

“In the last five years, hotels probably did maintain some rate integrity because times were so good. They could establish rates and pretty much hold them,” says Harvey Chipkin, a New Jersey-based hotel industry expert. “Now, even though times are bad, chains are trying to hold rates because the common wisdom is that if you heavily discount, guests won’t pay the freight when the rates go up again.”

In other words, hotels don’t want guests to start expecting low prices, so many resist cutting rates across the board.

Nonetheless, experts say that front-desk personnel sometimes have authority to offer deals to walk-in customers, especially if it’s late in the day and rooms are still empty. But it’s unrealistic to expect you’ll get a $250 room for $50. Moreover, if you try what I did, you may be quoted rates that are different from those I got. That’s because prices are affected by a variety of factors, such as occupancy and the time of year you visit.

But I did find walk-in wiggle room on prices, especially in Waikiki. And even when desk clerks wouldn’t come down on rates, they were often willing to upgrade me to a higher accommodation category--an ocean or partial ocean view--for the price of a standard double, which usually has less desirable vistas, called, variously, “garden,” “terrace,” “mountain,” “city” or “golf view” rooms. (See related story.)

Here’s an island-by-island breakdown:

Waikiki

More than 4 million people visit Oahu each year, mostly heading to the fabled crescent beach at Waikiki. Japanese tourists favor Waikiki especially, accounting for half of the visitors here, and that’s bad news for the tourism industry. “Japanese arrivals were down 50% in September and October,” says Rick Humphreys, executive director of the Hawaii Tourism Authority.

So Southern Californians who think of Maui or Kauai when planning trips to Hawaii may want to set their sights on Waikiki. As soon as I got here, I started finding deals.

From a phone booth at the Honolulu airport, I called my chief targets: the Sheraton Moana Surf- rider (one of four Sheratons in Waikiki), Royal Hawaiian, Hilton Hawaiian Village and Halekulani. At two of the four resorts, the rates I was quoted in those airport calls were lower than the lowest I found in my pre-trip research.

The most enticing was a garden-view room in the historic section of the 528-room Royal Hawaiian, a pink bauble of a hotel that opened in 1927. The rate was $195, compared with $272 when I called the reservations line from home and the $420 brochure rate.

I then rented a car at the airport and drove to Waikiki, where I started at the 2,998-room Hilton Hawaiian Village. But the front-desk personnel wouldn’t bargain, a pattern I found in both Hiltons I visited in the islands.

Just down Waikiki, however, the marble-lined lobby of the posh 456-room Halekulani was as empty as a beach at red tide, though when I walked up, the price for a standard garden-view double was holding at $275, the rate I was offered on the phone from the airport.

So I had lunch, then tried the front desk again. This time I got a tall, amiable young man named Asa. I felt compelled by the elegance of the place to explain my unexpected arrival. I had been on a business trip in the islands, I said, and, on the spur of the moment, had decided to stay two extra nights. (I told such fibs on several occasions because it’s unusual for a person to show up in the lobby of a luxury hotel asking for accommodations for the same night, and I didn’t want staffers to know I was a reporter. I also dressed nicely to further discourage hotel personnel from thinking I was riffraff.)

At the Halekulani, I probably didn’t need the white lie because Asa seemed happy to see me. While he showed me a $275 garden-view room and a $360 partial ocean-view room on the third floor, both with large, gorgeous baths, we chatted about his impending graduation from the University of Hawaii. I guess that broke the ice. On the way downstairs, he said he thought he could get the partial ocean-view room for $275, with an extended checkout time, though he had to check with his manager.

I almost booked it, but I needed to see what was up at the 793-room Sheraton Moana Surfrider, a handsome, century-old hotel with a modern tower. The front-desk clerks there wore graceful gowns but weren’t inclined to dicker over prices; the rates I was offered were the same as those I had been quoted at the airport phone booth. I looked at rooms in the older Banyan wing for $172 (city view) and $273 (ocean side), which were small but had pretty Hawaiian quilts on the beds. Then I summoned my courage and asked to see the manager.

He was a polite if harried man who offered me the same rates as the clerk, though he said he might be able to give me a room with a partial ocean view in the tower for $228 (worth $460, according to the rate sheet). It was huge and fresh looking, although the furnishings were rather bland.

Back at the front desk, the manager fielded a phone call--from a hotel guest, I gathered--while talking to me. I heard him say, “No, sir. I would if I could. But $100 for a suite is just too low. There’s only so much we can do. You’re already in a very nice room.”

I might have taken the $228 tower room if I hadn’t heard that, but clearly the guest was getting a better rate than I had been offered. And--talk about chutzpah!--now he wanted a suite for $100.

The sun was setting, and I needed to make a decision. So I went to the Royal Hawaiian, where the lowest rate was still $195. I all but twisted the desk clerk’s arm to upgrade me to an ocean-view room on the second floor of the historic section (priced at $273 when I walked in and $575 on the rate card). No. 283 had a king-sized canopy bed, plush towels, sheets and robes--all in pink--and a window that overlooked a roof, mostly. Never mind. The Royal Hawaiian is still the prettiest thing on Waikiki Beach, and when I checked in I got a fresh orchid lei.

The next morning I found more bargains at modest hotels (none with pools) I hadn’t priced before leaving. At the 79-room Aston Waikiki Beachside Hotel, across the street from the sand, I could have gotten a cozily decorated but windowless room for $75 as a walk-in versus $205 on the rate sheet.

At the far east end of Waikiki, the 124-room New Otani Kaimana Beach Hotel had a standard room with a little lanai and a Motel 6 feeling to offer to walk-ins like me for $99 (regularly $138 for low season).

Clearly, discounts were to be had on Waikiki at all price levels.

The Big Island

When I reached the Kona airport on the west coast of the Big Island, a man at the visitor information desk told me to go to the Kailua/Kona area if I wanted a bargain. He even wrote the names and phone numbers of three places where he was sure I could get a deal. As I walked away, he cried out, “Remember, ask for oceanfront!”

But I had my heart set on the Kohala Coast, north of the airport and lined with a handful of Hawaii’s dreamiest resorts, including the 243-room Hualalai Four Seasons.

When I called from the airport, a reservations agent told me the hotel was fully booked. And as a walk-in, I got a positively frosty reception. When I arrived at the front desk and asked for a room for the next two nights, the clerk said the resort did not take same-day reservations for “security reasons,” as though I were carrying explosives or planning to sit at the bar singing “Ten Cents a Dance.”

I pressed, asking whether I could get a room for the next night and whether a room would have been available for that night if I had called the previous day. Both would have been available, at the brochure rate of $475 to $500.

Then I asked to speak with a manager, who told me the clerk was mistaken about “security concerns.” Instead, she said, the hotel was full.

When I pointed out that I had been told space was available, she said the hotel didn’t always fill all the rooms during busy times so it wouldn’t put too much pressure on guest services like laundry. It didn’t make sense to me, and by this time I was hungry, though disinclined to stay there even for lunch.

I moved on to the rambling 1,240-room Hilton Waikoloa Village, with its dolphin pool and tram; the 539-room Orchid at Mauna Lani, a Starwood hotel; and the 310-room Mauna Kea Beach Hotel, built around 1960 by Laurance S. Rockefeller as part of the Rockresorts chain.

No great bargains here; the rates at all three were about the same as what I uncovered in my pre-trip research.

At the Mauna Kea, manager Alvin Oshiro told me rates dropped after Sept. 11 but then went back up. “We have lots of longtime returnees,” he said. “We don’t want them to think others paid less.”

Still without a place to stay, I stopped at the 545-room Outrigger Waikoloa Beach, which wasn’t on my list but looked good from the road. Renovated two years ago and now the flagship of the Outrigger chain, it had fresh if not particularly stylish rooms, with lanais. And it was offering discounts.

The desk clerk was a real pro. First she offered me a standard garden-view room for $133 (brochure rate $315), then an oceanfront room for $163 (regularly $485). I meant to take the cheaper of the two. But the clerk encouraged me to look at the other, which hooked me the minute I saw its sweeping view of the pool, lagoon and ocean, wrapped in gardens and flanked by lava flows.

While the Outrigger wasn’t as luxurious a resort as the others I checked in Kohala, it struck me as a good deal, even at full price. I also liked the room I saw at the Hilton Waikoloa Village, but the more expensive places didn’t seem in the mood to make a deal.

Maui

On Maui, the signs were inauspicious from the start. If I hadn’t reserved a rental car, I wouldn’t have been able to get one. The traffic around the Kahului airport was heavy, and at the Westin and Marriott in Kaanapali on the island’s west coast, long lines of guests waited to check in.

I also tried the Hyatt in Kaanapali, a smashing 815-room resort in three buildings that surround gardens so lushly tropical you almost wish you had a machete. There I was offered a terrace room with big mirrors, fetching prints and lamps, a plump, inviting bed and Southeast Asian-inspired furniture for $230 (regularly $300, though the rate increased to $350 just after I was there).

I ultimately stayed at the Hyatt (upgraded to partial ocean view for the same price) because my quest for other hotel bargains on Maui didn’t get me far. There wasn’t much give on rates at the Grand Wailea Resort or the Renaissance Wailea Beach Resort on the eastern part of the island or at places up the west coast from Kaanapali, like the Napili Kai Beach Resort and the Ritz-Carlton Kapalua.

An emperor’s palace of a hotel, surrounded by a golf course, on the heights above the rugged Kapalua coast, the Ritz-Carlton seemed about as forbidding to walk-ins as the Four Seasons on the Big Island. A businesslike clerk let me look at a handsome garden room for $325. When I asked if there was any flex on the price, she said no, in a tone that brooked no discussion. But then she said an American Express cardholder’s special rate of $265 might be offered if I called the Ritz-Carlton toll-free reservations line. It was available, and I would have taken the room if I hadn’t already decided on the Hyatt.

Still, I had a drink at the Ritz-Carlton, thinking that the clerk’s tip was the kind of gesture that turns comparison shoppers into repeat customers.

I wish I’d had time to do some snorkeling, but I decided that hunting for hotel bargains in Hawaii is its own kind of fun.