A luxury hotel in Maui that offers great value if you’re into maximizing your Hilton benefits, but otherwise struggles to justify the high prices it charges. The hotel’s location makes it perfect for viewing the fireworks at New Years.

This stay occurred in December 2023 and January 2024.

View other posts in this series:

• Trip Introduction: Ringing in the New Year in Maui
• Review: Grand Wailea (this post)
• Dining at Grand Wailea
• Plenty of Aloha: Review of the Andaz Maui at Wailea
• Andaz Maui Dining Options
• Having Fun on Maui with Kids

Booking

I originally booked this hotel stay roughly a year in advance, using 110,000 Hilton points per night. Hilton does offer a fifth night free if you stay five nights consecutively (and book all those nights in the same reservation all at once), but given we wanted to try out a couple of hotels on this trip, it didn’t make sense to take advantage of the savings for this stay. Note that on this stay, I booked each night separately as one-night reservations to maintain flexibility (in case I needed to drop a night if my travel plans changed).

In early December 2023, I received a free night from my Aspire credit card and was happy to find that award nights were still available for the normally-busy New Years holiday period. Since I did book my nights separately, it was fairly easy to just swap out one night’s points booking with a free night certificate from my credit card. Be advised that if you do this, you need standard award nights to be available or there will be nothing customer service can do, as they will need to first book the free night certificate before canceling the night booked with points. Since I made this change within the hotel’s cancelation period, I did ask the agent if making this swap would trigger a large cash penalty, and I was assured there would be no problem (and indeed it wasn’t a problem).

Over the New Years holiday, the hotel was asking for something north of $2,000/night for the base room. I would not pay anything near that rate, so it’s not completely accurate to say I received $2,000 of value in using the points, but I will say this is where I appreciate having points as it unlocks opportunities I wouldn’t normally consider.

Also, I will also say that I was successful in contacting the hotel to deposit money prior to my arrival. Why does this matter? Well, the Hilton Aspire credit card comes with a resort credit that can be used to offset charges. In 2023, the resort credit was still $250 annually (it’s now $200 every six months). I applied my $250 credit in December 2023, and then when I checked out in 2024, I had access to an extra $200 credit. If you book a stay here and happen to either cross over a six month period or if you book far enough in advance where you can take advantage of multiple credits, it will help with the inevitable on-property dining or other expenses you’re sure to rack up. In my case, we needed every bit of that combined $450 in credit and then some.

Earning Hilton Points

While there are multiple ways to earn Hilton points, I’m only going to focus on two main methods to acquire the points.

Signing up for credit cards can be a cost-effective way to earn points. American Express offers several cards at various price points, but it’s best to go with a card that gives great benefits if you plan on staying at Hilton hotels with any regularity. The Hilton Aspire card is single-handedly one of the best cards out there, offering a free night on renewal, a $400 annual resort credit ($200 each half year) that can be used on room rate or room charges, Diamond status, and a $200 airline fee credit ($50 per quarter). Currently, there is also a sign-up bonus of 150,000 Hilton Honors points, making it a quick way to earn points.

The other option is to simply buy Hilton points. Hilton has frequent “sales” that allow the purchase of points for half a cent each. Since Hilton uses a dynamic structure for award prices, it won’t be possible to find deals for most hotels. But there is an implicit points cap for each hotel. That means you could find some deals by buying points to stay at some of the most expensive hotels (think the Maldives). For this hotel, a cost of 110,000 points at half a cent each translates to $550/night room rate. It might not be appealing to spend $550 per night on a hotel room, but it does represent significant savings over the cash price and you may also get a great view of the New Years fireworks (mentioned in more detail later in the post), so this is one of the hotels where I could certainly see it working out as a splurge. You could certainly do much worse than this.

Arrival and First Impressions

We drove down to the Grand Wailea shortly after landing in Maui arriving at 3pm (an hour before standard check in). When parking your car, they only have valet parking here at the painful rate of $65/night (parking is currently free at the nearby Shops at Wailea, but no overnight parking is allowed). The friendly front desk agent found my reservation quickly, noted it was booked under three separate reservations, and thus needed to run my credit card three separate times for three deposits (there was no problem with my pre-arrival credit applied to the room working for the entire stay). The agent asked how many people were in the room and then handed me leis to distribute. Now, having been to Hawaii multiple times, I have to say this interaction was a bit surprising. A luxury hotel normally distributes the leis right as you get out of the car, as it’s the first interaction you have with the hotel. Asking how many are in the room (she should have already known from just working with my reservation details) and handing me leis to distribute was a rather hands off approach for a hotel charging such a high cash rate for their rooms. I would have liked to say this was a one-off interaction, but it encapsulates a bit of my thoughts on this particular hotel.

I have Diamond status with Hilton, thanks solely to the Hilton Aspire credit card, and so she mentioned I would get $50 in daily food and beverage credits thanks to the status. I didn’t notice anything incrementally different about the stay for being an elite member aside from receiving those credits. It’s a shame that Hilton ultimately promises the least for their elite benefits (no promise of suite upgrades, no late checkout), but they do just hand out their elite status like candy. Any American with their credit card can be an elite and I suppose the lack of real benefits supports that. Easy come, easy go.

The hotel has a $50 daily resort fee that is thankfully waived for those using points. I’ll talk more about the “features” of the resort fee later.

While I checked in, the kids had fun coloring some sheets of paper for Santa (yes, we arrived after Christmas, but perhaps this is just getting a head start on next year’s requests). The hotel gardens are well maintained and the hotel definitely had a Hawaii feel to it, if that’s a thing.

The Room

We made our way over to room 8099. I’ll be honest admit I was assuming a room with a poor view for this stay (because why take care of someone using points?) but we were happy to find it had everything we were looking for aside from the long walk from the lobby.

Once inside, there was a short hallway that contained a mini fridge with two reusable Path water bottles inside. There is also a coffee machine that seems pretty standard. Note this hallway does have a connecting door to room 8098 if you’ve booked two rooms and need them connected.

The kids wanted to show off the room, in part because they were happy to be here on vacation. The two queen beds here were fairly comfortable, but I wish they had either more pillows or pillows with better support. I found them fairly thin and inadequate and had a stiff neck one of the mornings as a result. The room does also have an overhead fan, which we didn’t use too much.

The room had a decent sized TV, but note there were no screen-sharing capabilities. So you’re out of luck if you wanted to broadcast an app from your smartphone.

The room had a table that was better served as a dining table than a work station. The chairs were at least comfortable. I should also note that there were no central controls for the light switches here in the room. If you wanted to turn on or off all the lights, you need to individually go to each of them and flip the switch for each lamp.

The bathroom felt pretty nice, with a separate shower and massive soaking tub. The vanity was on the larger side, with an oversized backlit mirror behind it. They also stocked it with plenty of towels. I don’t have any real complaints with the bathroom here and found it one of the better bathrooms we’ve been in.

The Grand Wailea still uses personal-sized bottles from their spa (Spa Grande) that have a mango scent to them. I found them very similar to the Cocomango toiletries from the Grand Hyatt Kauai, another excellent option.

The view from the lanai was quite beautiful. Being on the eighth floor, we were above the other buildings and most palm trees and were afforded a lovely view of the ocean. I imagine the view from the ninth floor is even more spectacular since there were a couple of trees that partially inhibited the view but even still it was better than I was expecting.

Resort Grounds

The hotel provided a map of the property, as it is quite expansive. It takes a decent amount of time getting from one end of the property to the other, especially since there generally isn’t a straight line you can take to get there.

The hotel still had some Christmas decorations around the property, including the giant surfboard Christmas tree welcoming everyone to the resort near the valet desk.

The hallways by our room were open to the elements and would have provided a view of Haleakala if not for the cloud coverage that seems to surround the mountain.

Once down on ground level, there was a lengthy winding walkway over to the pools, beach, and restaurants. The path had a pond full of koi and some nice foliage, but it was quite a walk to get to the rest of the property.

Eventually, you’ll get to Humuhumunukunukuapua’a, the signature restaurant at the resort, and just beyond that are both the pools and the beach. I do like the atmosphere they have for the restaurant, but I’ll talk more about it in the next post.

The entrance to the beach is covered in low growth. As for the beach itself, the sand is very soft and while the waves weren’t too large, there also wasn’t much of a natural break in the water that stops more powerful waves from coming in. While we weren’t specifically looking for it, we didn’t find any coral or sea life in the waters here.

As for amenities while on the beach, don’t expect much. While the hotel advertises beach umbrellas and chairs as part of their daily resort fee, they were all gone by the time we showed up a bit after 9am. Yes, a lot of guests stay here, but they seem to do a poor job at making an adequate number of beach chairs available.

And since we’re talking about this area of the resort, just next to the beach is where the hotel hosts its luau. While it would be difficult to watch this from the comfort of your hotel room, you could just camp out at the entrance and watch the show, if you so desired.

I wandered around a bit more and found some lovely scenery (not pictured: the construction panels immediately behind me).

The pools here are perhaps what truly draws people to this resort. They have an extensive number of pools, linked together by many lazy rivers and water slides. You can start at the top and gradually make your way down to the bottom. When we were here back in 2013, they had a “water elevator” that would then take us back up to the top without needing to get out of the water. However, my understanding is the water elevator broke a few years ago and there appears to be no desire to repair it. That’s too bad.

Finding a seat here can be challenging. We asked hotel staff if they could let us know which chairs are taken or if they monitor things at all. We were told there was no monitoring at all going on, and so they could offer us zero help. The only monitoring that seems to take place is by attendants at the top of the larger slides to make sure there is ample time between people wanting to slide.

Yes, the pools here are heated, but I found inconsistent heating in each pool. Some pools would be warmer and then you take the slide down into a cold pool, not realizing it’s colder until it’s too late.

Also note there is no free sunscreen here, which I have commonly found at other luxury resorts in Hawaii and elsewhere.

There is also an intricate series of caves and bridges you might have to take to get around the pools, especially with no water elevator available.

For younger children, there is a zero-entry pool that feels more like a beach with the sand they placed here. We ended up not using this pool as the kids preferred the water slides instead.

Near the zero-entry pool is a rope swing area. We didn’t use it, but there was a decent line to use it (when it was open).

Even Char wanted to get in on the water slides. Thankfully, the staff allowed us to have her go down with us on the shorter slides, which eased her nerves. Though by the end of our stay here, she was going down by herself.

We received wristbands to use the pool, but I will admit no one ever checked them. Char had a wristband of a different color to signal she wasn’t big enough to use the largest water slides.

Resort Fee

What do you think you might expect for a $50 daily resort fee at a luxury hotel in Hawaii? Here is what’s on offer:

• A 45-minute photography session (which only matters if you intend to purchase photos)
• Unlimited local and toll-free phone calls (who uses this these days?)
• Complimentary Wi-Fi (free if you are a base member of Hilton Honors)
• Two refillable Path water bottles
• Beach yoga and outdoor fitness classes, if available
• Hula and ‘ukulele lessons, if available
• SCUBA clinics and snorkel lessons, if available
• Use of beach cruiser bikes (notably, the “beach” cruiser bikes aren’t available near the beach)
• Beach umbrellas and chairs, if available (and in our case, gone by about 9am)

If you don’t do any of the lessons or are unable to sign up for them, there really isn’t much benefit you’re able to get from this resort fee. You get two bottles of water and what feels like not much else. It’s a real shame the hotel fails to add anything substantial with this mandatory bogus fee. I’m just glad it’s possible to avoid the fee when booking using Hilton points.

Service

The service here simply feels like it doesn’t exist. I’ve already mentioned that the check in process felt very mechanical and lacked any personality. And I mentioned that the pool staff can offer no assistance and admitted to not monitoring anything. Everyone here just felt like they were too busy to be bothered by all the guests. And that’s the real problem trying to act like it’s a luxury hotel. It would be nice to have someone here even give us a smile, and they didn’t even have the energy to do that. The hotel wasn’t even fully booked, evidenced by points rooms still being available in December for a stay over New Years.

And what about the cleaning staff? Well, at the end of our stay, I decided to look in all drawers in the random event one of our kids left something behind that we didn’t know about. Waiting for me was a used condom wrapper. Thankfully, the used condom wasn’t also in here, but it’s quite disturbing that this wasn’t cleaned either before we arrived or for the duration of our stay. It does make me question what else was skipped that I didn’t catch.

Odds and Ends

We had a perfect room to view the New Years fireworks. I believe the Grand Wailea generally hosts the fireworks annually (based on some light internet research I’ve done). They went off at midnight, waking up the kids, but the room faced the perfect angle to see all the action. As long as you get a clear view of the sky over the ocean from your lanai, I imagine many rooms here at the Grand Wailea would have a good view.

There are a few water stations found around the property, though the one nearest us was in an area with a heavy scent of propane (there must have been an inoperable tiki torch). The water stations do say you can get hot water from them. So if you wanted to be very cheap, presumably you could cook instant noodles here?

Recommendation: It Depends

I’d like to say that spending $2000/night comes with certain standards. And that this hotel doesn’t do a good job managing those expectations. Service here isn’t polished and no one goes out of their way to ensure you have a perfect stay, with guest rooms that seem to not be fully cleaned. Things I expect to happen at a high end resort don’t happen here (free sunscreen, leis on arrival, adequate number of beach chairs, any level of personalization, among other things).

The hotel really is meant for three types of people.

• Those who want to go to a water park in Hawaii and spend the night at that water park
• Those who are Hilton loyalists, have the Hilton Aspire credit card, and want to maximize their benefits
• Those who want an excellent spot to view the fireworks for a special occasion

I feel that most others will find the hotel’s benefits don’t make up for its flaws. Yes, we did get good value for our stay with the Hilton Aspire credit card. One night was covered by the free night from the card, and combining two cycles of resort credits with the daily elite food and beverage credit gave us $600 of dining credit (and some room to cover the outrageous $65 daily parking charge). We ended up still paying about $350 out of pocket, which is awesome–don’t get me wrong–but the stay would have felt much more expensive if I weren’t attempting to maximize my return by taking advantage of the features of that credit card.

So the big question is will we return? Probably not. If I am paying a high price (either in points or in cash), I want certain comforts in return and I just don’t get it here. I’m glad I had a chance to re-experience the hotel a decade after first coming here, but I’m not longing for another return.

In the next post in this series, I’ll discuss the food options found at the Grand Wailea resort.

Have you stayed at the Grand Wailea? What are your thoughts?