Ko Olina Resort & Marina may soon be adding another new hotel, and it could carry the Four Seasons name.
An executive with Canadian-based Four Seasons Hotel & Resorts recently registered a new business in Hawaii named FS Ko Olina Inc., and a trade name — Four Seasons Resort Ko Olina at Lanikuhonua — was registered in January by the master developer of the oceanfront West Oahu resort property.
Four Seasons officials could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
Jeff Stone, Ko Olina’s master developer, issued a statement through spokeswoman Sweetie Nelson that said "we don’t comment on speculation and rumor."
Some industry observers suggest that the business and trade name registrations signal that discussions for a potential Four Seasons hotel at Ko Olina are at an advanced stage yet nevertheless might not lead to fruition.
Stone companies have filed trade names over the years for several hotels — including The Ritz-Carlton at Ko Olina, Ocean Edge Hotel, Park Hotel and Bay Beach Hotel — that didn’t result in development.
For Four Seasons, the executive who registered the new corporate entity, Laurel Vanderjagt, has led negotiations on many new projects including buying land in Florida to develop the Four Seasons Resort Orlando at Walt Disney World, and making a deal to develop the Four Seasons Hotel Macau, as well as letters of intent and management agreements, according to a 2010 issue of Canadian law publication Lexpert.
Vanderjagt could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
Adding to the intrigue about a potential Four Seasons project at Ko Olina is Takeshi Sekiguchi, a developer from Japan who had a hand in developing the Four Seasons Resort Maui at Wailea and was part of Ko Olina’s original development team.
Sekiguchi, who worked with Stone several years ago on a $1 billion hotel and aquarium project that didn’t pan out, recently stated that Four Seasons was coming to Ko Olina in a Honolulu Star-Advertiser interview about the launch of a new residential real estate brokerage business.
Sekiguchi, through a representative Tuesday, would not elaborate on that comment, made through an interpreter in May.
Joseph Toy, president of local tourism industry consulting firm Hospitality Advisors LLC, said Ko Olina developers have dreamed of landing a Four Seasons or other dominant global luxury resort hotel for more than three decades.
"It’s certainly a natural for a luxury operator to go in there," said Toy, who in the late 1980s worked with Sekiguchi and original Ko Olina developer Herbert Horita on some planning work.
Ko Olina stalled in the 1990s after development of four lagoons open to the ocean, a golf course and the Ihilani hotel, which was later converted into a JW Marriott under that brand’s luxury line.
Stone led an investment partnership that acquired the mostly undeveloped resort in 1998 with the aim of turning it into the "Wailea of Oahu," and has made gradual progress, adding a 270-slip marina, hundreds of homes and resort condominiums, a small retail center, a Marriott time-share complex and, most recently, Disney’s Aulani Resort in 2011.
Today there are two prime undeveloped lagoon-front sites covering 26 acres that could be divided for more than two hotel, condo or time-share projects.
Toy said the timing is ideal for a new hotel at the resort, given record tourism and high hotel occupancy in Hawaii, an abundance of investment capital and a location primed with infrastructure and amenities, land-use approvals and strong existing hotel operations.
"We’re at a tipping point for new hotel development," he said.
