Honolulu Hoteliers Hitting The Improvement Highway
<B> Honolulu Hoteliers Hitting The Improvement Highway</B>
By Judy Jacobs
A tax abatement bill passed in early June by the Honolulu City Council will give Honolulu hotel owners an extra incentive to consider adding to or renovating their properties. Long before the bill had even been considered, however, several hotels already had made a headstart with major projects.
The new bill gives non-residential property owners a seven-year tax holiday on the increased value of their property as a result of new construction and/or renovations. Although no hotel has announced projects because of the bill, the Sheraton Waikiki, the Ilikai Hotel Nikko Waikiki, the Hilton Hawaiian Village and the Outrigger Prince Kuhio are all in the midst of or recently have completed major renovations that will carry them into the next millennium.
The Sheraton Waikiki is in the fourth year of a five-year, $20 million renovation project that is redesigning the entire 1,852-room hotel with the theme of the honu, the Hawaiian green sea turtle. Work has been completed on most public areas, as well as the corner suites and some of the medium suites. The guest rooms will be completed in early 2000.
The Sheraton ballroom recently underwent a $5 million renovation and now has new carpeting, wall coverings and a digitally controlled lighting system. Along with the new look is a series of new meeting services, the two most notable of which are what the hotel calls "banquet concierge" and "banquet butlers." The banquet concierge is stationed at a desk with a phone, fax, laptop computer and walkie-talkie radio. He or she is onhand to answer questions, give directions and solve last-minute problems. The banquet butlers assist planners with services such as moving boxes and setting up and taking down exhibits.
Further improvements will be made to the hotel's conference floor, with eight of the 15 smaller rooms to be refurbished this year and the other seven during the first quarter of 2000. The work on the meeting rooms is in line with Sheraton Waikiki's new thrust to capture a greater share of this market.
"We were much more geared towards leisure and incentive travel before the convention center opened, but now we're preparing for more meetings," said Michael Troy, director of sales and marketing. The Hawaii Visitors & Convention Bureau is playing a much stronger role in the meetings and incentives industry, he added, which has resulted in greater interest in the meetings business.
Though the neighbor islands have emerged as strong competitors, because their hotels have spas and golf courses on property, "Waikiki's pricing is more competitive as a result of competing with the neighbor islands and also with places like Florida and Arizona," said Troy.
The Hilton Hawaiian Village is another hotel with a major project underway. The hotel's Alii Tower has been in the midst of a $12 million renovation, which will redo all corridors and rooms, replacing soft goods and some of the furniture. The renovation will be completed in mid-December.
Another of the hotel's towers, the Lagoon Tower, will close Feb. 1 and undergo a $30 million renovation. The Lagoon Tower consists of 243 one- and two-bedroom apartments, some of which are available to guests and are being marketed to convention attendees who bring their families. After the tower reopens, however, it will become part of the Hilton Grand Vacations time-share division, and at this point it's uncertain whether any of them will be available for short-term rental.
Meanwhile, the Hilton Hawaiian Village still plans to construct the Kalia Tower, which is scheduled to open in early 2001, at the same time the Lagoon Tower will be ready. The 26-story, 450-room Kalia Tower is projected to cost between $80 million and $100 million. It will include a Hilton Towers executive floor, as well as a full-service health and wellness center spa. Plans also call for 5,000 square feet of meeting space. Although the Kalia Tower is the only addition that Hilton has announced so far, this spring the hotel's owners purchased the site of the Waikikian on the Beach Hotel.
Not far away, the Hyatt Regency Waikiki is also in the midst of a major makeover, with plans to spend a total of $42 million. The project will cover the entire hotel, from the 1,230 guest rooms and 18 suites to the public areas and meeting facilities. The Regency Ballroom and Diamond Head meeting room have received a major facelift, with new airwalls, carpets, tables and chairs, paint, wallpaper and a state-of-the-art sound system. As part of the renovation, a new business center and spa will be added.
The 10,000-sq.-ft. spa, Waikiki's first world-class spa, will be located on the fifth and sixth floors between the hotel's twin towers and have panoramic views of Waikiki Beach and the Ko'olau Mountains. It will feature conventional spa treatments as well as promote health and wellness through traditional Hawaiian healing methods. The spa will include 19 treatment rooms, an exercise area, whirlpool, jacuzzi, sauna, steam rooms and a refreshment area.
The additions and renovation are expected to put the Hyatt in a new light. "The whole image of the hotel is changing," said Rene Nakashima, sales manager. "The spa will give us more of a resort feeling and allow us to get the higher-end business. It should help us capture more of the incentive market as well, since there is no other hotel in Waikiki that has a full service spa."
Meanwhile, a $2 million renovation of the 358-room Ilikai Hotel Nikko Waikiki's Yacht Harbor Tower began in late February and is scheduled to be completed by year-end. The project includes replacing all soft goods in the guest rooms and adding an extra phone line to be used as a computer dataport.
On the other side of Waikiki, the Outrigger Prince Kuhio has completed a $7 million renovation that redesigned all 625 guest rooms. Six parlor suites, one mountainview suite and one oceanview suite have been added to each of the hotel's top three floors.
"We have dataports in all of our rooms now and have added working desks on four floors, in a total of 72 rooms," said Patsy Norimatsu, the hotel's director of sales and marketing. "We're trying to reposition ourselves as a corporate hotel and are going after a lot more group business. We're getting a lot more associations, as well as a lot more corporate meetings these days.