Four Seasons Resort Hualalai

Ka'upulehu was once a fishing village on the dry side of Hawaii Island, and the land is still black with the lava of an 1801 flow from Hualalai, the volcano that rises behind the coast. The Four Seasons Resort Hualalai, in Kailua-Kona, opened on this shore in 1996 and set a template that the rest of the island's resorts have been copying since: no tower, no high-rise, just clusters of two-storey bungalows spread along the beach between the lava and the sea.

History

The resort was developed in the mid-1990s on land held by the Kamehameha Schools trust, as the anchor of the Hualalai residential community that surrounds it. It opened in September 1996. A decade later the computer entrepreneur Michael Dell's investment firm MSD Capital bought the resort and the community, and the owners have put money into it steadily since, with a full renovation of the rooms and a rebuild of the arrival area in the years around 2020.

The golf course came first. Jack Nicklaus designed the Hualalai Golf Course, which opened ahead of the hotel, and since 1997 it has hosted the PGA Tour Champions tournament that opens the senior tour's season each January, now called the Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai.

Architecture and design

Nothing at Hualalai stands taller than two floors. The rooms are arranged in crescents of bungalows, each crescent with its own pool, so that the resort reads as a village rather than a hotel. The materials are local: lava rock walls, koa and ohia wood, lauhala matting, and open-air corridors that leave the trade wind to do the cooling. The lobby is a pavilion rather than a hall, and most public rooms have no walls on the sea side.

Rooms and suites

The resort has around 240 rooms, suites and villas. Ground-floor rooms open on to lawns and lava gardens and a good number have outdoor lava-rock showers in a walled garden. Upper-floor rooms have lanais facing the ocean or the golf course. The largest villas sit at the edge of the beach with their own plunge pools.

Dining

'ULU Ocean Grill is the main restaurant, on the sand at the edge of the sea, with a menu built on island fish and produce from the resort's own farm partners. Beach Tree, under the trees by the beach pool, serves Italian and Californian dishes and is the place for sunset. Hualalai Grille, by the golf clubhouse, handles steak and the evening after a round. There are several bars, among them a sushi bar at 'ULU.

Wellness

Hualalai Spa is a garden spa with outdoor treatment rooms, a lap pool and a large fitness complex that includes a basketball court and a climbing wall. The resort has seven swimming pools in all. The most celebrated of them is King's Pond, a 1.8-million-gallon saltwater swimming hole blasted out of the lava and stocked with some 3,000 fish of around 75 species, including spotted eagle rays; guests snorkel in it as they would on a reef. The Kumu Kahua cultural centre next to it runs classes in Hawaiian crafts and history.

Weddings and events

The resort hosts weddings on the beach and on the lawns, and conferences in a set of meeting rooms and a ballroom in the function wing beside the golf clubhouse. Beachfront lawns take large dinners, and the golf course and the 'ULU terrace are used for receptions. Specific room capacities are not given here.

Location

The resort lies on the Kona-Kohala coast, about 11 kilometres north of Ellison Onizuka Kona International Airport at Keahole and roughly half an hour north of the town of Kailua-Kona. The coast here is the driest in the islands, which is why this is the resort on Hawaii Island with the most reliable sun. Among resorts on Hawaii Island, Hualalai is the one that treats the lava as a feature rather than something to hide.