Fairmont Kea Lani

Our family just spent five nights at the Fairmont Kea Lani in Maui and had an amazing time. The staff was fantastic and so helpful. Kudos specifically to Front desk Rachel and Tara and all the shuttle drivers! Our house keeper (room 481) was also super great! Thank you very much to all the staff for making the stay so wonderful!

We stayed in the 2 bedroom villas. I highly recommend if you are here with you family for several days. The accommodations are perfect and you have a full kitchen and washer/dryer. The hotel supplies you with water, dish soap and detergent everyday. It’s perfect if you want to grab an easy lunch or pack a picnic for your adventures. The villas were nice to escape the wind on windy days. We have 3 children and it was perfect. I highly recommend booking Nicks for dinner especially for your first night- it’s easy, on site and delicious.

The hotel would be an ideal location if you are the sort of parent that is comfortable letting your children run around unattended without consideration for those around you. Hotel was crowded and understaffed. Finding a spot by the pool was difficult as families would send poor mom to lay down towels at 6:30am to reserve a place to sit. The beach in front of the pool was littered with pizza crusts and plastic cups from the day prior. Pricing was comparable to the Ritz in Kapalua, where we had stayed earlier in the week and should have remained.

We stayed at the Fairmont Kea Lani the first week of April for our first trip to Maui. Having been to the Big Island and Oahu previously we expected similar accommodations albeit at slightly higher prices. It seems we were only partly right. While the Kea Lani looks great on the surface it’s obvious that the property is aging, and no longer reaches the level of a five star resort. Although it’s large, it concentrates its guests in central areas, making it seem much smaller than it is, a potential issue during covid. On a positive note, the rooms are relatively quiet, but the bathrooms are worn and in need of a refresh. Ours was seemingly infested with ants. Value is the heart of the problem. Those with disposable income are willing to part with it if they feel the expenditure is worth it. However, here we felt it was clearly not. $18 for 1 drink by the pool is a bit ostentatious, even for Hawaii. $45 per person for a breakfast buffet that you have to wait 40 minutes in line for is unacceptable, no matter where you’re vacationing. Want to rent a kayak? - $80; a shaded hut by the pool? - starts at $200; valet service? $46 per day. And these costs are all in addition to a $45 per day resort charge. Not to mention the on-site restaurant Ko - which will happily serve you adequate fare at prices that would make seasoned New York restauranteurs blush. We’ve traveled all over the world and stayed at some great resorts no doubt. However, none of them imparted quite the same feeling of existing to efficiently and quickly separate vacationers from their wallets as the Fairmont Kea Lani does. Your mileage may vary.

Let me start with the positive. Beautiful property and staff that try to please. Concierge was very helpful ahead of our arrival and made arrangements for every night of our stay. However, the pool chair situation is nothing short of the Lord of the Flies. This has to be addressed by the management at a resort of this caliber. We were so excited to walk down to the pool with our children on the first day of our stay. We had early breakfast in our suite, got ready and were down there by 9 AM. We were shocked to find out from the attendant that there were no chairs available. Nada. You would think that there would be people occupying them but no, most of the chairs had some kind of personal belongings on them and were unattended for hours. We were told by the pool attendant that people come super early, way before the staff even get there, and put some things on the chairs to “claim” them for the rest of the day. I am not sure what your idea of a vacation is, but getting up at 5:30 AM to reserve chairs that you will not even be using for hours is absolutely unacceptable, especially at these prices. We were told that this is because of COVID-19 and that they cannot put out that many chairs. What happens is, most of the chairs are unattended by people so the rest of guests who did not get chairs are just left swarming around the pool on top of each other. The place is absolutely packed! In fact, this has resulted in quite the opposite effect in that it has created a rather COVID-19 unsafe situation. This has also resulted in guests being hostile towards one another with pool chair wars going on. My 10-year-old daughter lifted her floaty from her chair for one second and some woman immediately tried to “claim” her chair from her. Unbelievable! Something has to be figured out because we took a look around at neighboring Four Seasons and they have figured out the pool chair reservation system very well. Same goes for the Andaz, which is beautiful and very well organized. We were told by one of the pool attendants that the hotel actually has a policy of people not being allowed to reserve chairs for more than one hour and that they are supposed to take personal belongings off once the chair has been unoccupied for one hour, but nobody is enforcing those rules. We saw chairs with personal belongings just sitting there from 9 AM till 2 PM and nobody showing up. They need to institute some kind of a reservation system because this is ruining our vacation. Until this is figured out, we would not even think about going back here. If you’re trying to make a decision, I hope this is helpful. Please consider Four seasons or the Andaz. But not here. Unless you’re OK waking up at 5:30 to claim a pool chair. To me this is outrageous especially at these prices. This is clearly a management problem. I hope they listen. I know other guests tried to send this feedback to the general manager during their stay and never heard back. This is so disappointing. We’re actually still here and will be here for the next few days and will likely just figure out some beaches to go to. What a waste of money.