High-end luxury hospitality spurs Pineapple Isle unease

Imagine a helicopter bypassing Lanai’s airport and landing hotel guests on the doorstep of the island’s premier resort fronting Hulopoe Bay, where Four Seasons ambassadors escort visitors directly to their rooms or suites and where nightly rates range from $950 to $21,200.

The rooms are finished in teak and zebrawood as well as handmade Nepalese “lokta” paper. Wool hand-woven area rugs rest on mahogany floors. A 75-inch platinum bezel LED TV, a Nespresso coffee maker and a wine and Champagne bar add to the allure. Guests can access their room wearing wristbands that use radio frequencies to unlock the door, have in-room use of an iPad Air and can control lighting, room temperature and window shades from a wall panel that includes “day,” “sunset” and “relax” modes.

In the teak-paneled bathrooms, there are Japanese-style wooden soaking tubs and TVs on in-mirror screens.

This is the property formerly known as the Manele Bay Hotel, which is scheduled to reopen Feb. 1 as the Four Seasons Resort Lanai after a $75 million makeover.

The number of suites was roughly doubled to 51 as part of converting space not previously used for guestrooms and reducing the room count to 217 from 236.

The hotel is part of the vision for a reborn tourism industry, serving as the economic engine of Hawaii’s smallest publicly accessible inhabited island.

This vision from Pulama Lanai, the management company overseeing the island for its billionaire owner, Larry Ellison, also includes providing visitors with new activities, getting them to stay longer and introducing them to more of Lanai’s natural and cultural history.

But how the vision affects the community when implemented is a big uncertainty for many of Lanai’s roughly 3,000 residents, most of whom have connections to the island forged before its pineapple plantation was replaced by two luxury hotels in 1990 and 1991.

“We’re nervous,” said Phoenix Dupree, general manager of the Blue Ginger Cafe in Lanai City.

Barbara Lucas, owner of the nearby restaurant and bar Pele’s Other Garden, put it another way: “We’re all holding our breath till next year.”

Kurt Matsumoto, Pulama’s chief operating officer, said the goal is to make the hotel profitable — something he said it never was under Lanai’s prior owner and original hotel developer, David Murdock of Castle & Cooke Inc. Profits, he added, will stay on the island and be reinvested in other ventures that help make Lanai’s economy more diversified and sustainable.

Yet some longtime Lanai residents aren’t sure how much trust to place in Ellison, who bought 98 percent of the island in 2012 and hasn’t made any major public appearances on the island.

Small-business owners in particular question the impact on their livelihoods from such a dramatic change to the hotel. They are even more unsettled by Pulama’s undetermined timetable for reopening the island’s other shuttered Four Seasons hotel, the 102-room Lodge at Koele, which is near Lanai City’s commercial core and typically generated more business for local shops and restaurants.

Credit to Ellison

Many Lanai residents give Ellison credit for doing a lot of nice things for the community, often with little or no regard to expense, while investing so much money in the oceanfront hotel.

For example, Ellison renovated Lanai’s historic theater, preserving its plantation look outside and installing two screens with top-end equipment inside. Pulama shows first-run films even though ticket revenue doesn’t support the expense. The theater also features Filipino movies, such as “Etiquette for Mistresses,” that are popular with Lanai’s predominantly Filipino population.

Jean Sumagit, president of the Lanai Filipino Community Council, said the community asked Pulama for the ethnic movies, which play in Tagalog with English subtitles. “They heard us,” she said.

Sumagit also noted that ticket and food prices in the theater are lower than in Honolulu. There’s free furikake and li hing powder for popcorn. A large beef or Portuguese sausage hot dog costs $3.

Pulama also has removed more than 100 junked cars from the island, began renovating the Filipino Clubhouse building in June, is converting an old plantation home into a hospice center and opened the island’s first pharmacy.

“These additions raise the quality of life on Lanai,” said Linda Lileikis, a Pulama executive overseeing the hotel renovation.

Gary Onuma, a Lanai native who retired as Castle & Cooke’s commercial hunting manager three years before Ellison bought the island, said Ellison paid to make the community pool, which Murdock closed because of costs, into arguably the best community pool in the state, with lounge chairs, umbrellas and lush landscaping.

“I always get my own lane,” said the avid swimmer. “From a selfish perspective, life is good for me.”

Enhanced experience

Another planned change is to attract more tourists and keep them on the island longer.

Visitors in recent years spent an average of about 3-1/2 days on Lanai, one day less than they spend on Molokai and about half as many days as other islands.

Parts of this initiative include reopening attractions that Murdock had closed and enhancing other previously existing activities.

Four Seasons plans to resume horseback riding and four-wheel utility terrain vehicle rides when the resort reopens. An archery and clay shooting range that isn’t far from the Lodge and had been closed by Murdock is slated to reopen later next year.

Planned new tours will connect visitors with Lanai’s natural and cultural history through hands-on experiences, such as helping care for a near-shore fishpond and inland taro ponds that are ancient Hawaiian sites Pulama is working to restore. Pulama plans to organize programs to share the knowledge of, and bounty from, such sites with visitors.

At the oceanfront hotel, Pulama wants to attract more conference groups and offer more venues to host weddings, such as the golf course’s 12th hole, perched on the edge of rugged cliffs that fall away to the ocean.

Recently, Pulama officials proposed creating two private heliports at the resorts for use by Four Seasons guests.

So, how will all these plans reshape tourism on Lanai? That’s something about which residents aren’t quite sure.

Uncertain future

Matsumoto, the chief operating officer, said Pulama isn’t trying to turn Lanai into an exclusive playground for the rich and famous. He said Ellison has a broader vision to diversify Lanai’s economy beyond tourism with longer-term plans that include establishing a university research center, film studios, a professional tennis academy and large-scale organic farming.

“When you look 25 years from now, I hope you’ll see a lot of things working better on the island,” Matsumoto said.

Still, some residents fear that raising hotel rates so dramatically could result in fewer visitors, and that a new class of vacationers won’t venture as much into Lanai City for a plate lunch or fresh ensemadas.

“They might look at our town as a ghetto,” said Neal Rabaca, owner of Rabaca’s Limousine Service. “Who knows?”

Shelly Barfield, a county employee who spent 13 years working at the two hotels under Castle & Cooke, said she expects visitors to the renewed oceanfront hotel will still come to get away from urban environs and will appreciate Lanai’s plantation town essence.

“I know Lanai as Lanai,” she said. “It’s a slow-paced island, family living, country, outdoorsy, laid-back. That’s what makes Lanai unique.”

Ron McOmber, a retiree and longtime resident, said he shudders to think about what might happen if Ellison’s big hotel investment doesn’t pay off. “It’s spooky,” he said.

The biggest unsettling issue for many Lanai business owners is that Pulama hasn’t indicated when it might reopen the Lodge. Whether the hotel gets a makeover and a rate hike also isn’t determined.

Pulama said it will still need to house contractors for other projects after the oceanfront hotel opens, and that the roughly 140 Lodge employees will still be paid during the closure.

Dupree of Blue Ginger Cafe said Lodge guests, who tended to include more kamaaina visitors, were a far bigger source of his customers compared with those from the oceanfront hotel, and that the cafe has lost money since last year. “That property is the key to our success in town,” he said of the Lodge.

Dupree wishes that Pulama had built separate housing for contractors instead of closing the Lodge. At the same time, he recognizes that the situation could have been worse, if Ellison didn’t buy Lanai and Murdock decided to close the hotels with no future plan.

Rabaca, the limousine company owner, who once picked pineapple and maintained Castle & Cooke’s vehicle fleet, has a guarded approach to running his company even though his business has done well while the hotels are closed. Rabaca stopped annual upgrades to his fleet of SUVs after Ellison bought Lanai, and he isn’t sure whether the Four Seasons will cut into his business with enhanced guest services when hotel guests return. Regardless of what happens, he plans to adapt.

“When something closes, something else opens,” he said. “That’s how I look at it.”