Originally Posted by jpdx

Just completed two nights here. We were pleasantly surprised.

At check-in, we were told that we'd been upgraded to a "suite," but it wasn't quite ready. We had an early arrival with Your24 approved, and they gave us the option of taking a standard room right away or waiting ~half an hour for the suite. We were given a voucher for an appetizer and a couple drink chits for the bar, and very soon our room was ready.

The "suite" is a single large room (the size of two standard rooms), and is recently remodeled and looks pretty nice for a Sheraton. Given this hotel's bad reputation, we were pretty shocked how nice it was. Our room was located on one of the highest floors of the hotel and had a large lanai with sweeping views over Waikiki. For some reason, the bathroom was not included in the remodel, and it looked like it came straight from the 1970s. We caught a glimpse of a standard room on our (remodeled) floor -- these are very tight.

We received coupons for daily full buffet breakfast, in addition to the 500 points. The buffet was pretty good by US standards, with an omelet station, sausage/bacon/etc, Japanese options, fruit, a salad bar, and continental stuff. The restaurant area isn't super appealing, but as far as food is concerned, I'd put this buffet on par with Hapuna Bay and SR Princeville.

I had an insanely low BRG of $110+/nt (plus 2k points BRG reward), so certainly good value (no need to PM me, this claim was Trivago.de to TUI; if that doesn't work for your dates, I can't help). As has been pointed out above, the resort junk fee and pricey parking increases such a low rate by more than 50%.

We have been to Honolulu dozens of times, and have tried basically all chains, with most stays at the Hyatt and Sheraton Waikiki. These had rates of >$350 for our stay dates, and the fallback options of Centric/HHV/etc were still twice as much as the Kaiulani. I was certainly worried about staying at the Kaiulani, based on the poor reviews here, but given the price and suite upgrade, we were very satisfied. The Kaiulani won't ever become our go-to hotel in Waikiki, but if the price is right, it's well worth considering. We will occasionally be back, but probably not without an approved suite upgrade.