Just returned from 9 days at the Westin Maui and here is a trip report, including New Years eve at Kaanapali.

We stayed 5 nights on an SPG award and 3 paid nights, for which we paid for “Deluxe Oceanfront.” We’re SPG platinum. We were extremely pleased to be upgraded, in advance of arrival, to deluxe oceanfront for the entire stay – meaning our 5 award nights were upgraded from mountain view to deluxe oceanfront. We offered to take the hotel up on their nice deal whereby you can “pay the difference” to upgrade – which would have been about $500 in our case (i.e., the difference in rate per night from mountain to oceanfront). However, when we so offered, we got a letter from the assistant to the GM that the hotel would place us in oceanfront at no cost. We were tremendously pleased, especially given that we knew this must be a peak period (the hotel was, in fact, 100% occupied for the first 6 nights of our stay).

We had been advised to ask about the platinum suite upgrade, but given the long length of our stay and the capacity level of the hotel, we certainly were not expecting to receive a suite upgrade. Nevertheless, the hotel came through with the upgrade to a wonderful “premium suite” in the beach tower.

The Room. The layout of the beach tower is such that on the blunt end to the ocean there are 2 rooms (X89 and X90) which are “deluxe oceanfront” rooms (not suites). There are 11 floors, so there are 22 such rooms. Then, there are 2 suites on this blunt end, the “premium suites” (X91) and another, much, much larger suite (X88). Not sure the “name” of this one. We did get a quick chance to glance in the one on our floors, but it was occupied and being cleaned, so we just saw from the entry and it is huge.

The premium suites at X91 location are a one bedroom suite in a somewhat strange layout – the living room area is blunt to the ocean and then the bedroom and finally bathroom run down the side of the building facing Whaler’s Village. I will say this about the location of these suites. The living room rocks, although as compared to the oceanfront regular rooms, you do give up a balcony facing blunt to the beach (this suite has all the balconies – three of them with 6 chairs!!! – facing Whaler’s Village with a side view of Kaanapali and a good view of Black Rock) since this living room uses all the space forward to building’s edge. You do get a sliding glass door, which you can open to get the roar of the ocean sound, but no balcony. The only reason this might be important is that, the sound of the air conditioning units at Whaler’s is really loud and probably the biggest bummer about the Westin’s location. We were midway up the building and with our balcony windows open day or night, these AC units are louder than the surf. They’re very loud.

Nevertheless, this suite is a great room – you can leave all those side doors – three of them – closed (you probably would want to anyway since the in-room AC automatically shuts off and it is pretty hot at night – i.e. you’d probably prefer your in room AC to be on versus the roar of ocean sound anyway). The bathroom is awesome, all marble with separate shower and tub. The bedroom has a 4-post heavenly bed and you can see Black Rock from the bed. The living room has an entertainment center and couch and another large lounge chair.

The Hotel’s Facilities. Some threads report that this hotel is sort of like “Disneyland” and I would have to concur. It was very, very crowded and lots of kids abound, but, if you don’t mind hustle and bustle, this hotel is positioned on what I believe to be the best location on Kaanapali because it is equally central to everything. We were able to walk to Teppanyaki-Don at the Sheraton on one end of Kaanapali or to sushi at the Hyatt on the other end, either in about 10 minutes max. The beach at the Westin location is not as rocky and the tide seems to come in higher than at the far Hyatt end.

The pool is awesome, although we like the pure speed of the Hyatt waterslide better (we stayed one night at the Hyatt just to check it out). The pool is kind of a “game” during peak periods, which is a little annoying on what is supposed to be a relaxing vacation, but if you learn how to deal with it, all is well. What I mean by this is (i) lounge chairs fill up quickly in the morning with people definitely getting down there about 7-8am to lay down towels to mark chairs and (ii) towels run out on some days by 9am or so, and then you have to get on a waiting list for towels. The solution we found was basically to not turn in towels and keep them overnight, so you can just plop down towels at your convenience in the morning and not have to wait for the towel stand to open at 8am, wait in line, then find that many chairs already are taken. I do have to say this hotel was enjoyable in the pure selection of locations by the pool and the views. My lady like shade and I like sun, and we found a few regular spots where we could get sun/shade within a few feet of each other basically all day. We especially enjoyed the upper pool area reserved for adults and did not have trouble with kids up there as others have reported- the resort was pretty good about keeping things in order and making sure families played b the rules and stayed at the 4 other pools.

We did do the $20 per person breakfast buffet basically every morning. You just have to suck it up and do it. It rocks. Tons of fresh papaya, etc. – also fresh fish in the Japanese section, cooked to order omelettes and waffles. Good stuff. We ate a few times for lunch & dinner & room service, and it was all okay, though we were bummed the Westin chose to close their sushi restaurant. The sushi at the Hyatt is outstanding and frankly the quality of fish is the freshest we found on the island, better even that the acclaimed Sansei.

The staff was very friendly. No complaints at all. Especially the maids and pool staff. Sometimes it was a very long wait to get served at the front desk, but excepting that, all was fine. The gym was fine, but I would note no ellipticals which was interesting for a gym with 20 pieces of cardio equipment. My lady enjoyed the poolside massage/manicure area.

New Year’s at Kaanapali. We went into Lahaina town for dinner and a show, intending to stay there, but it became sleepy down there and at 11pm we bailed back to the hotel. Glad we did – the “scene” was definitely at Whaler’s where there were maybe 2000 people mulling about on the beach walk and beach in front of the restaurants. There were 2 bands and plenty of patron-launched fireworks, although we heard that traditionally the hotels did a pro display, which was cancelled this year. Anyway it was fun. The Westin had a $52 party in a ballroom, we didn’t want to do that but we did go to check it out – seems 100 or so people took advantage of it. The band was playing Motown stuff when we checked it out at about 12:30am, and by this time they were just letting anyone in for free.

The free-7500-SPG-points timeshare deal. You will see many signs throughout the hotel pitching you to come to the timeshare deal which is on the far end of the resort. The actual timeshares will be several miles up the road but I don’t think they have broken ground yet so they are pitching pre construction sales at this time. If you are platinum, they will aggressively try to get you to sign up, i.e. calls and cards under your door and some macadamia nuts. They will offer you $100 in resort credit, but if you ask, they will give you 7,500 Starpoints instead.

We thought this alone was a good deal, but, I wanted to go anyway because I have been intrigued by the chance to stay at the timeshare one year and get points every other year. It was interesting to be gone from FlyerTalk during this whole category-5-6 “crisis” and point increase – I knew nothing of this but one question I did ask the timeshare guy was, how can we know SPG points will not be devalued of I spend this $41,000? He said we just have to trust SPG, trust their brand and that they would not devalue on us, but the timeshare contract contains no provision disallowing them to do so. Interesting to get home one day later to this big point devaluation. People who dropped $41,000 are probably hopping mad.

Anyway we did like the timeshare and might buy, but it is kind of a bum deal for SPG platinum members, because they only give you gold. And, with all these points you are prepaying for in essence, you’ll probably be having less revenue stays, so it will be harder to qualify for platinum. That gives platinum members a very particular disincentive to not invest in an SPG timeshare. Other than that, the plans for these units seem spectacular. I told them I would buy right there if they would do lifetime platinum instead of lifetime gold, but they said they had no flexibility on this issue. The pitch is reasonably high pressure (you have to decide that same day to buy or you lose all the incentives they offer to you) and takes about 2-2.25 hours despite them telling you 90 minutes. Still worth 7500 points for sure.

All in all this hotel completely met our expectations, capping a terrific year with SPG. This is the first time I have ever (significantly) redeemed points I have earned, and I had a great time. The hotel exceeded our expectations and we’re thankful.

P.S. We day-tripped with Trilogy to Lanai and went up to check out Manele Bay. They showed us a room and invited us to swim. The place is epic, and I can’t wait to stay there.