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The 23-year-old Grand Wailea is beginning a $30 million renovation of its guest room interiors, as well as its meeting rooms and pools, which is a project aimed at incorporating a more “contemporary look” and sustainability features, such as LED lighting and carpeting made out of recycled materials, according to an announcement.
The project calls for new furniture in rooms and is expected to be completed in early 2015.
The Grand Wailea has 780 rooms, including 52 suites, resort spokeswoman Yvonne Biegel said. The guest room renovations will include the rooms initially, and the suites will be refreshed in the latter part of 2015, she said. The last time rooms were renovated was in 2009.
Los Angeles-based interior architect Robert Barry is leading work on the hotel rooms’ redesign, after his firm, Barry Design Associates, won the job in a design competition.
“The firm was behind the luxuriously iconic look of the resort’s Spa Grande and has worked on hotels and spas, including the One & Only, Bahamas; the El Conquistador Resort in Puerto Rico; the Mauna Kea on the Big Island; the Beverly Wilshire Spa and the Naples Grand Beach Resort,” the announcement said.
Other sustainability features include bed accent carpet made of recycled nylon fish nets from the Pacific islands.
According to Barry, the project’s overall design “focuses on a clear but subtle sense of place, translated in a sleek, modern aesthetic.” The color palette is derived from the island of Maui and its surroundings with a green scheme like the lush landscape of Hana and the auburn-brown-gold colors found within Haleakala Crater.
The theme of featured artwork – curated by Nancy Caslin Art & Design – is of water and surfers, including a photograph of Shane Dorian, who is in the Surfers Hall of Fame.
“We designed the rooms with a clean look to attract the young, modern demographic that is becoming very design savvy,” Barry said.
Other features include a 55-inch, high-definition LCD flat-screen television with USB cables and power stations at the room desk and bed stands to allow guests to charge their cellphones, laptops and other electronic devices. A fiber optic system upgrade will allow Wi-Fi connections throughout the resort.
Plans for pool upgrades call for retiling the Hibiscus pool, which already has been completed, and a new pool deck at the Wailea Canyon activity pool, which is nearing completion. Restrooms are being upgraded at both pools.
To reduce energy consumption, the resort is installing 37 new variable-frequency drives and pump equipment to adjust water flows in the pools.
The hotel, a Waldorf Astoria Resort, has 40 acres of “lush, tropical gardens fronting Wailea Beach,” the announcement said. It also has nine restaurants and bars, including the thatched-roof Humuhumunukunukuapua’a, built over a saltwater lagoon.
Biegel said the current work is not connected with a special management area permit granted to the Grand Wailea in April 2012 for expansion and renovation work. That project called for the extension of the hotel’s Molokini Wing onto the site of the Humuhumunukunukuapua’a restaurant, expansion of pool areas and the removal of the hotel’s chapel to make way for more rooms in the hotel’s Lagoon Wing.
“There are no current plans to proceed with the permitted projects at this time,” she said. “The former owners were interested in the project, but it is not under current consideration by ownership now.”
The resort’s former owner was Pyramid Project Management, and the current owner is GIC Real Estate, the real estate arm of the Government of Singapore Investment Corp.