Owners of the Mauna Lani Bay Hotel & Bungalows decided it will be faster and easier on guests to shut down rather than keep the resort open during next summer's construction program.
Photo courtesy Mauna Lani Bay Hotel

The hotel is calling the work a "refreshment" rather than a renovation because they will not be altering the style of the resort, according to Mark McGuffie, resident manager.

"We're not doing a total remodel. We're keeping the integrity of the Mauna Lani intact," he said.

"The type of work that we're going to be doing is going to create noise and it would be very inconvenient to have the hotel open, from a guest standpoint as well as for the employees."

The work includes expanding the kitchen and seating area of the popular Ocean Grill restaurant, redecorating the Bay Terrace Restaurant and upgrading its kitchen, and re-plastering and tiling the main swimming pool.

A resort hotel cannot tell its guests that they can't use the pool, McGuffie said.

The hotel also will modify the cashier/concierge desk area, add 40 connecting doors in guest rooms, and upgrade guest room entryways and bathrooms.

Speed is another factor in the decision to close the hotel while the work is done.

"If we wanted to do this project open, one, we would have a lot of upset guests and two, it would probably take twice as long," McGuffie said. The hotel is scheduled to reopen Aug. 1.

The luxury hotel, which opened in February 1983 as the centerpiece of the Mauna Lani Resort, consists of 345 rooms and five bungalows. Owned entirely by Japan's Tokyu Corp., the hotel was built at a cost of $71 million.

Since December 1990, it has had another luxury hotel as a next-door neighbor, the Orchid at Mauna Lani, formerly the Ritz-Carlton, Mauna Lani. There are also luxury condominiums in the area.

McGuffie acknowledged that the shutdown is coming at a time when the hotels in the area are doing particularly well but he said the closure will the get the work over quickly and get the property reopened up in 10 weeks.

"Occupancy this year improved fairly dramatically," he said. The previous three years were sluggish in the Kohala area, he said.

Then came the extension of the runway at Kona's Keahole Airport, the arrival of jumbo-jet Japan Airlines' flights from Tokyo and United Airlines' direct flights from the West Coast. "Now we're looking at Korean Airlines coming in December and JAL is talking about increasing their service to daily," McGuffie said.

He said the hotel has told the 615 employees about the coming shutdown and is in discussions with their union, the ILWU, about what will become of them while the hotel is closed.

Some departments will remain open, he said. The hotel is planning some employee training programs for the period when the hotel is closed and said it will keep as many employees working during the closure as possible.