jbarm

A couple of notes:

!. Wristbands are issued and checked.
2. I would be amazed if they gave you restaurant breakfast credit as a Titanium. Per my discussions with them, Titaniums are a dime a dozen at this resort and you get very little recognition as an elite. I was 'upgraded' to a room as a Titanium with a view of a loading dock last month. (hotel was full).
3. Breakfast elite offering at Starbucks isn't bad. You get any drink they make, a pastry and fruit cup. All are fresh and tasty. If you want to upgrade anything, you just pay the difference of a dollar or two. We took ours to the beach every day.
4. Beach chair access. You can have a max of two beach chairs per room. If you don't get there first thing in the morning you probably will have to be put on a wait list. Beach guy does his best, but there is just one attendant and you have to haul your own towels down to the beach and take them back. Bit of a hike to the beach too.

Still..... it is a nice resort and on Maui. So enjoy the aloha spirit.

edgewood49

Spot on. It's more apparent these days that one's expectations need to be somewhat diminished when boarding the plane to the islands. We have taken to booking the best possible room with points or such that way we are not totally disappointed. Good news is internationally one is better off using points and more "respect" for status.

spellbound2

Good to know to keep our hopes in line. Do you know of any 'less bad' options they may be willing to offer Titaniums? Our preference is for less early morning noise (garbage trucks, construction, etc) so if we can ask ahead for that I'd be grateful if you have any ideas. We're there the week after Christmas on points so I don't know if I can hope for much. Thanks!

kthpence

It's not a "hike" to the beach ... from any room in the resort, it can't be more than 10-12 minutes, if not significantly less from the Hales closest to Wailea Beach. It's also not a "long uphill walk" from the Wailea Shopping Center ... it's a nice 5 minute walk from the lobby to the shops.

We often went to Ulua beach with our towels and relaxed there - it was quieter than Wailea Beach and had better snorkeling.

jsl_313

I'll second this. It's maybe a 3 minute walk from the lobby to the Shopping Center. Unless one of your travelers is elderly or disabled, this shouldn't be an issue. And for the beach not being part of the resort, it's about as close as it can get; an easy walk down a paved sidewalk for a couple minutes. I've been to AI resorts with private beaches that took just as long to walk to.

kthpence

Exactly - in fact, if you're staying at the Grand Wailea or 4S, depending on where your room is, the walk would undoubtedly be longer than the walk to the beach from the Marriott.

BTW - we stayed on points and paid $750 for an upgrade for 5 nights to a premium ocean view. We met a couple in the pool that also stayed on points and didn't pay for an upgrade - they were overlooking the loading dock and towards the mountains & were placed in the big tower.

If you don't want a room like that, I wouldn't bank on an upgrade & I'd call the resort to see if you could pay for an upgrade in advance.

jsl_313

We also stayed on points, but didn't upgrade as we planned to spend money on other things (which was fine since there were great views from pretty much everywhere else on the resort). I usually don't place a ton of value on view, but those ocean front rooms looked incredible.

edgewood49

It comes down to how much one wants to spend on a Hawaiian vacation, some as the above poster said they wanted to spend that money on other things works for me ! For us now we tend to book points and cash to make sure we get the room we want rather than worrying all the way across the pond.

kthpence

The views are incredible, but tbh, the privacy is not. That, however, comes with being so close to Wailea beach / all the other resorts. On the flip side, none of the other resorts in the area are nearly as close to the ocean as this resort, which we valued greatly! An ocean view room at the 4S or Andaz still can't compete with the views from even the partial ocean views here.

kamchatsky

I stayed on travel package certificate and points earlier this year. They upgraded me to pool view with view of the ocean on the background. I was only lowly Gold. Very happy with the resort apart from the daily resort and car parking fees.

Jailer

Just received the nicest upgrade ever at this property, 733 an executive suite overlooking the ocean. Reserved the basic room on points, used suite upgrades and am hitting Titanium with this stay.

Coming from the very likable Westin Ocean Villas the Marriott Resort is so much more welcoming and Aloha-esque: really one of the best check in experiences in recent memory.

View from one of three balconies

This morning from balcony #2

Living room

edgewood49

There is a Santa Claus!!! Enjoy

AJC724

Are you able to provide any details on how you secured the upgrade, Jailer? Did you use your platinum suite night awards, call or email in advance or request anything at check in? I’ve got an upcoming stay and after months of ruling out any real possibility of an upgrade your good fortune has made me hopeful!

Jailer

AJ, I'm happy to share the pathway to this upgrade, but really it was a one-off due to a small disappointment during our last stay. Our room was pre-reserved and we had access at 11 a.m., so no negotiation at check-in was needed. Also, only two nights (of 14 nights on Maui) and so the short stay probably made the upgrade possible. I booked the least expensive room on points and applied two Suite upgrades as I didn't want to be piggish. Here, fwiw, is the email that I sent to the GM, and I must add that I really love this hotel and they went well over the top to move back into the "rotation". Indeed, when I asked Mrs. Jailer if all was forgiven, she merely laughed manically:


Dear GM:

Because of a couple of odd occurrences during our last stay that left a bad impression on my wife, and I must admit me as well, we have given your hotel a miss the last five or so times in Maui: we go at least once, sometimes twice, a year.

The first issue I thought was funny. My wife called up the tennis center and the person on the other end enthused that there was a free clinic taught by the pro and that they are happy to demo a racquet. Too good to be true, my wife bought some tennis shoes only to learn that this was crazy talk, no free pro-clinic (duh)…my guess is that some joker picked up the phone as he walked by and pranked her. That’s something I would have done given the opportunity. Lacking sympathy, I howled.

The second issue was a bit egregious: I gave the bartender our welcome drink chits and said that we wanted to order dinner. Got the drinks, pointed out to the barkeep where we were sitting outside not far from where the band sets up, but no waitstaff came to take an order, despite circling like a shark. (And, yes, I know that sometimes/often there is a hostess to seat you, but this time there was none. As a semi-regular that is why I alerted the bartender of our location/intent).

No biggie, back to the drink-slinger who said without setups the waitress might be confused so he kindly came over and set us up and then we watched the server navigate around us over and over and over. Yes, I could have tackled the waitress, but it became as if a game of chicken. We blinked, with my Asian-American wife uncharacteristically muttering, “what are they racist?” we walked over to Botero’s, where the service and food was characteristically AbFab. Maui...it’s all good.

I did gently complain to the front desk the next day, styling my concern that we aren’t overly sensitive but this occurrence was darn strange and I was still perplexing even after a day passed (I mean, I stay in hotels a lot and Marriott is in the hospitality business and you gave us free drinks to be hospitable, right?). I recall mentioning, “well, at least now I know what it was like to be African-American in the South in the 1950’s being unable to get served in a diner and so I accept this as a lesson in white privilege and that it’s good for my soul and evolution as a human being.” I really wasn’t trying to be snarky, and it wasn’t taken that way AFAIK. I don’t think that the same desk clerk merely feigned horror at my answer when she checked us out a day later and inquired if the GM contacted us. "No", and I wish your predecessor had so that I could have put this hotel back into rotation as we have had some very nice Plat Elite upgrades. The team member offered us dinner, which was grand, but since we were on our way to the airport she said to mention this incident next reservation, which you will note below.

I know that this was a random one-off, so I’d like to rehabilitate the Beach Resort as I’ll run out of +/- 3 million Hilton points before I spend almost 6 million Marriott’s. Wife correctly points out that there are plenty of places to stay in Maui and, after all, it’s her job to spend points, mine to earn ‘em: a first world problem to be sure, but in that I really want to get back to the Beach Resort I am hoping for a nice two-night stay, moving forward.

Doing my bit for the cause, I have applied two Suite Upgrades to the following reservation: ****************.

UA-NYC

Gave the Starbucks as shot for my morning coffee run as my usual go-to CB&TL in the mall has sadly closed. Big mistake - took forever, $18 for three drinks (one of which was a drip coffee). Insult to injury, they take the Starbucks card but of course can't redeem points here, where it would be an outsized value.

New Akamai coffee location just up the hill is quite good ^