The Westin Ka'anapali Ocean Resort Villas

Currently staying at The Westin Kā‘anapali Ocean Resort Villas, and this is our second — and last — stay here. Both times we’ve stayed at this property, our room has not been ready at the guaranteed 4 PM check-in time. During our first visit, the room was almost two hours late. We were told it was a rare situation and doesn’t usually happen. Now we’re here again, and it’s the same story. After a long flight and a one-hour drive from the airport, we’re sitting in the lobby yet again waiting for a room that should have been ready at 4 PM. We’ve already been waiting an hour. At this point, this is clearly not a one-off — it’s a pattern. A resort at this price point should be able to deliver rooms on time. Guests plan their arrival around your stated check-in, especially after cross-Pacific travel. Beautiful property or not, consistently failing to have rooms ready at check-in is unacceptable and shows poor operational management. We won’t be staying here again.

We got a timeshare offer- even then, it worth it. Nope. Sorry. Definitely not. This is for people who don’t know value in resorts. Food is poor quality, overpriced. Restaurants and crowded and staff overworked. Resort is large, pool too small and understaffed. Nice beach with walking trail up/down coast and other resorts - Marriott. Bonvoy has destroyed their resorts. Avoid. Much better options for a little more $. This place is for time share owners (aka suckers).

Don't stay here we were promised a ocean view room but they put us in a pool view room i called two days before to see what floor we were on told the 6th that fudnt happen their only resturant and bar sucks

100% Maui satisfaction at this resort! The rooms are lovely, the staff is exceptional, the grounds are perfectly well-kept and you can hear the ocean waves from your room. We most definitely will be back next year!

Location: 5/5 Grounds: 5/5 Room: 3/5 Staff: 5/5 Amenities: 3/5 Food/Drinks: 2/5 Value: 2/5 Overall: 3.5/5 I'm rounding up to 4/5 because of the location and staff. My wife and I had yet to visit Hawaii, and we couldn't have picked a better location than the Kaanapali area for our first time. Kaanapali was beautiful, the weather was great, the beach was absolutely amazing, and we saw whales breaching from the beach. Really amazing views across the water to Lanai and Moloka'i. This resort stay came as a discounted offer from an acquaintance who had a timeshare they weren't using for 5 days. We got to stay in a one bedroom island view villa at a very good rate below the average booking rate by the resort. The cost is important because at our cut rate just over $400/night, it was a reasonable price given the location. Had I paid the full $700/night for the rooms, it wouldn't have been worth it. If this property wasn't beachfront on Kaanapali beach, it would be maybe a $200/night hotel. Substantively I think this is a decent property, and the location is superb. Kaanapali is a beautiful area and the weather was nearly perfect the entire time. This resort's location on Kaanapali beach is the biggest positive, as Kaanapali is among the top beaches in all of Hawaii. The resort grounds were well maintained and thoughtfully done to give an immersive tropical vibe. Our room showed some wear and age in certain areas like the sliding door, balcony and some parts of the interior, but overall it was in pretty good shape given that it's next to the ocean. They were very clean and kept clean by housekeeping staff. Staff got it cleaned early in the day and always did a great job. The bed was very comfortable and sheets appeared to look and smell clean. As for amenities, the pool was probably the best and was excellent. Having a water slide, hot tub and kids splash pad is an excellent option. There is a heavy demand for lounge chairs, and people do get out early with towels to reserve them. Fortunately you can usually find chairs near the back. In the middle of the day people were pretty good about vacating their lounge chairs if they weren't coming back. This is much better than I've seen at some resorts where people will leave towels on chairs for hours unattended (sometimes for half a day or more). With there being quite a few chairs, we really had no problem getting chairs. There weren't a ton of amenities here otherwise, but since this was Westin, you could go to other resorts like the North towers, Nanea and Westin Maui, which had additional options available. You just have to be willing to give up an hour of your day to go for something as little as a coffee shop. There were regular free shuttles down to Westin Maui, and to Whaler's Village, which was a nice option. Unfortunately at the end of the night the return shuttles from Whaler's Village get filled quickly and my wife and I found it much faster to just order an Uber instead of wait 30+ minutes for a 3 minute shuttle ride. My wife and I enjoy drinking on vacation, and we are used to all inclusive resorts where we can drink all day at no additional charge. Very quickly we learned how expensive alcohol is in Hawaii, and the resort price markups were definitely a thing here. Our first drinks we ordered were mediocre Bloody Marys at the pool bar and with tip that was something like $37. After that we wised up and went into Honoapiilani to a grocery store and bought our own alcohol. We were able to drink for the entire week for less than $75 buy buying local alcohol and mixers, and cans of beer. Westin have a mug drink plan where you pay $25 for an insulated mug to keep, and you get unlimited fountain beverages (non-alcoholic) and coffee. This is a good value because we had those constantly filled. Then we'd take it back to our room and mix in our alcohol and head back down to the pool. It's a great hack, and turns out that we weren't the only ones doing it. Halfway through the week we saw several people at the pool with liquor bottles in their pool/beach bags pouring floaters in their sodas and juice. At that point I just started bringing the alcohol bottles down with us to the pool and just kept them out of site. Nobody cared, which is nice that people just leave this alone. The food situation was also an issue. The first night we got there we went to Pailolo and we had to wait nearly an hour for a table. The service and food was mediocre, and the drinks were decent but again extremely expensive. Beer is really the only reasonably priced drink here. The rest of the time we couldn't get in to Pulehu, the Italian restaurant. We debated Auntie's Kitchen, but several other guests told us it wasn't worth the price and based on the food we saw when walking by, it didn't look all that great. We bought our own coffee at a nearby coffee shop because there's no coffee shop immediately at this resort. The Westin Maui to the south had a Starbucks, and there's no self-respecting coffee drinker that wants to drink Starbucks in Hawaii when Hawaii produces some of the best coffee in the world. We found a couple coffee shops in the area that were pretty decent, so all was not lost. There was a drip coffee maker in our room, though we had to go buy our own filters for it which was just another little inconvenience. Filters are dirt cheap in bulk, and Westin could easily provide complimentary coffee filters in rooms for pennies a day and it would make a world of difference for customer convenience. We wound up buying our own food to make breakfast and lunch in our room on most days. For the evenings we were able to make reservations at local restaurants. Fortunately we knew ahead of time to make reservations a long ways out for Mama's Fish House in Paia. The lobby concierge staff were very helpful, and they were able to get us a couple reservations. We also were able to secure a luau table down at Westin Maui, and that was a great experience. The front desk staff were very good, and the porters/valets were all very personable and friendly. Staff here overall was great. The parking is at a premium, but I had parking included due to my room being a timeshare. The cost is otherwise $35/day and while I understand that parking is at a premium, $35/day is excessive. I bring this up because there were also other things like beach equipment rentals and fees for not returning towels that could also add up and became this nickel-and-diming game. If a customer is paying $700/night for a room, why wouldn't you include parking as a perk? Or rent beach umbrellas for free? I visited the other Westin properties and both the Nanea and Maui locations were vastly better in a myriad of ways. Westin is an overall good product and I'm a Marriot Bonvoy rewards member for that reason, and while I do think that this resort is a decent product, I don't think it's the right product for people who are used to more traditional resorts with more amenities and options. If we came back to Kaanapali, we'd likely stay at the aforementioned Maui or Nanea properties. The Kaananapali property really is just a beachfront hotel with a pool and I think calling it a resort is a bit of a stretch. This is the first non-all inclusive resort we have ever stayed at, and frankly after this stay we both decided we were going back to all inclusives.