Mandarin Oriental Opens Former Hilton After $75M Redo

<H1> Mandarin Oriental Opens Former Hilton After $75M Redo</H1>By Fred Gebhart

<B>T</B>he Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, counting on an upswing in business traffic to Hawaii to boost occupancy at its second U.S. property, has just completed a $75 million refurbishing of the aging Kahala Hilton.

After being closed for 13 months, the Kahala Mandarin Oriental opened March 1 on the outskirts of Honolulu with 370 luxury rooms, a new ballroom, significant meeting space and the property's first business center.

Already, the property's business facilities are seeing higher-than-expected use, said general manager Seamus McManus.

"A surprising number of our guests are here on business, as well as the anticipated leisure crowd," said McManus, who served as general manager of the Mandarin Oriental in Hong Kong and oversaw the Kahala's renovation. "People aren't necessarily working 10 hours a day while they're here, but the center is getting quite a bit of traffic."

The property's new meeting space is experiencing a high level of activity as well, said McManus. Five large association events were booked for the opening week, in addition to smaller corporate forums. At the same time, meeting room occupancy climbed to 50 percent in less than three weeks.

The hotel's new design retained the existing 2,700-square-foot Wailea Ballroom, with banquet seating for up to 200. The existing formal dining room, The Maile Restaurant, was gutted and rebuilt as the Maile Ballroom, with 5,200 square feet and banquet seating for 400. Another 1,660 square feet of meeting space is divided among four smaller rooms.

The Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group has been seeking a Hawaii property for several years. The company saw an opening in 1992 when the Bishop Estate, owners of the real estate beneath the Kahala, raised the hotel land lease payments from $96,000 to $5.6 million annually, forcing the owners to sell. MOHG bought 40 percent of the property and brought in Tokyo General Company as the majority owner; the hotel closed in February 1995.

The most obvious physical change to the property is a new two-story dining hall next to the lobby. The ground floor houses the Plumeria Beach Cafe, a reincarnation of its namesake original. Upstairs is the Kahala's new signature restaurant, Hoku's. The multilevel lunch and dinner house provides ocean views from every table and is Honolulu's most extensive oyster and sushi bar. McManus lured Chef Oliver Altherr from The Regent Hong Kong to oversee restaurant operations.

Room renovations mix mahogany furniture, teak floors, Tibetan area rugs and grass-cloth wall coverings. Bathrooms have been rebuilt from the floor up. Rack rates start at $260.

One thing that hasn't changed, however, is the service. When Conrad Hilton opened the doors in 1964, the Kahala Hilton was staffed with an eager flock of 17- and 18-year-olds, and nearly all of the existing service staff returned as Mandarin Oriental employees, giving the new property the kind of polished service that normally takes years to develop.

McManus is hopeful that the Waialae Golf Course, which wraps around the hotel, will be open to hotel guests. One of Hawaii's most exclusive courses, it has resolutely barred outsiders. But faced with the same hike in land-lease costs that forced out the Kahala Hilton, it may look more kindly on paying guests.