Native Hawaiians Don’t Own Many Local Hotels. Here’s Why That May Change.

While the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands and ali‘i trusts collect land rents from 18 hotels, some Hawaiian groups are aiming for ownership.

From his east Kapolei office, Kūhiō Lewis leans toward his computer screen, quickly clicking from webpage to webpage. His eyes brighten as his screen flashes to a Google search page filled with hotels and condos in Maui’s Nāpili area. A few minutes later, his screen shows a street view of properties along Waikīkī’s Beach Walk.

The CEO of the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement is looking for a boutique hotel to buy. If he’s successful, it would be the first for the nonprofit, which aims to enhance the cultural, political, economic and community development of Native Hawaiians.

Hotels are the foundation of Hawai‘i’s largest industry. In 2023, hotels statewide brought in $5.7 billion in revenue. But it’s not common for Native Hawaiian families or organizations to own these properties. Hawaii Business Magazine found only one hotel still owned entirely by a Native Hawaiian family. The state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands and three ali‘i trusts own land that 18 hotels stand on, but they are not hotel owners themselves. Instead, they use lease revenues to support their missions.

“One thing that’s very prevalent is we are not engaged meaningfully in the economics of the tourism industry as a people that call this place home,” Lewis says. “We get the 9-to-5 jobs, we get capped wages, but we’re not making the kind of money that the owners or the ownership structures are making. We’re not part of the curation of the story that’s being told or how people are presented with what Hawai‘i looks like.”

Some Native Hawaiians view a Hawaiian entity owning a hotel as a step toward economic justice for the Islands’ Indigenous people.

Hotel ownership is one goal of many Hawaiians. Another is that hotel owners and leaders, no matter their ethnicity, embrace Hawaiian values, educate themselves about Hawai‘i’s culture and history, and seek cultural guidance when appropriate. Several hotel leaders already do this, and many properties have cultural directors or advisors to guide their activities and, in some cases, influence property-level decision making.

Hawaiian-Owned Hotels

The Hawaiiana Hotel opened on what is now Waikīkī’s Beach Walk in February 1955. A newspaper article the following month described it as “capitalizing on every inch of its theme – everything Hawaiian.”

Woven calabash baskets and kapa hung in every apartment-style guest room. The hotel’s staff was all local, and its bellboys were accomplished musicians who would perform Hawaiian music several times a week. The hotel owners sought to provide each guest with personalized attention and “genuine old island hospitality,” wrote the author of the March 1955 Honolulu Advertiser article.

That hotel was built and then briefly owned by Kepoikai Aluli and his partners. Aluli also pioneered cooperative apartments on O‘ahu and spearheaded development of the Nāpili resort area on Maui in the 1950s and ’60s.

Aluli first learned of co-ops while attending school on the U.S. mainland, his nephew Nane Aluli says. In co-ops, residents or investors are shareholders in the cooperative, rather than owners of units.

Kepoikai Aluli and his partners built The Mauian and Nāpili Village Hotel as cooperative hotels. The Mauian’s lease returned to Aluli in 1996; he converted the property into a traditional hotel that his family members owned until 2003. The Nāpili Village Hotel’s ground lease returned to the Aluli family a few years ago; today, the family continues to own and operate the property as a hotel.

The Kimi family has also owned hotels across the state. Richard Wassman Kimi built the Kaua‘i Sands and the Kona, Hilo and Maui Seaside hotels in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s for budget-conscious travelers. He also owned the Waikiki Biltmore for a time. And his brother, William Kimi Jr., built and owned Uncle Billy’s Kona Bay and Hilo Bay hotels. The Neighbor Island hotels remained in their family for decades; the last ones were sold in 2021 and 2022.

Another Native Hawaiian-owned hotel was the 318-room Keauhou Beach Hotel. Amfac opened the hotel in 1970, and it was the first hotel in Kamehameha Schools’ 1,100-acre Keauhou resort and residential complex.

Kamehameha Schools acquired the Keauhou Beach Hotel in 2006. Greg Chun was the president and manager of the KS subsidiary charged with implementing its Keauhou Resort master plan. He says KS did not originally plan to become a hotel owner, but it saw an opportunity to turn the hotel and its neighboring parcel into a cultural destination with educational programming.

The hotel was situated among some of Hawai‘i’s most significant cultural sites. To the north was Po‘o Hawai‘i, a pond with an underground connection to the ocean, where ali‘i would bathe. And to the west were Kapuanoni, Hāpaiali‘i, Ke‘ekū, Hale o Papa and Mākole‘ā heiau.

The hotel was managed by Outrigger Hotels & Resorts. Marissa Harman, director of asset management for KS, wrote in an emailed statement that KS worked with Outrigger’s management team to infuse the estate’s vision into the hotel’s activities from 2006 to 2012. The hotel hosted lau hala weaving classes with master weaver Elizabeth Malu‘ihi Lee, wa‘a voyaging and navigation workshops, slack-key and Hawaiian music festivals, and ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i events.

The intent was to have reciprocal relationships with the surrounding land, cultural sites and local communities. KS engaged in conversations with longtime area residents and restored three of the nearby heiau. Hawaiian families were also invited to record family stories and connect with one another and the broader Kahalu‘u and Keauhou ahupua‘a.

KS closed the Keauhou Beach Hotel in 2012 in the aftermath of the Great Recession and the estate’s growing concerns about the hotel being incompatible with the site: It had been built on and around several heiau, and it jutted out over the ocean, Harman wrote. The hotel was demolished in 2017 and 2018, and the area is now a gathering place and educational complex called Kahalu‘u Ma Kai.

Financial Resources Needed

The Aluli family sold The Mauaian in 2003. Nane Aluli, who has served as the hotel’s general manager since 2000, says the family didn’t have the financial resources needed to renovate the hotel and make it competitive.

“When you talk about the old Maui (Seaside) and Kaua‘i Surf properties, those were all owned by local families,” he says. “We didn’t have offshore owners, and then it got to a point the local families couldn’t keep it up.”

He says that the large amount of money required to sustain a hotel operation is one of the greater barriers to Native Hawaiian hotel ownership. “I think that becomes the most difficult piece,” when it comes to sustaining a property and passing it on to future generations, he says. “You’ve got to be able to financially make it successful, and that’s tough in today’s environment.”

Keith Vieira, principal of KV & Associates Hospitality Consulting, says that’s largely why Hawai‘i’s ali‘i trusts and other major Native Hawaiian organizations have stayed away from owning hotels. Those organizations instead look for guaranteed, steady income from their leasehold tenants.

He adds that the cost to acquire a hotel will vary depending on the property, but it’s hard to find something for less than $500,000 a room. It’s also common for hotel acquisitions and renovations to be funded through debt, and not everyone wants to take on that risk.

“That’s why you have private equity groups who are some of the primary owners because they have the ability to raise hundreds of millions for renovations and repositioning,” Vieira says. “And if you don’t continually renovate and reposition, you’re never going to make money in the long run. So I don’t think that fits directly with what some of these Native Hawaiian groups want to do.”

While Native Hawaiian families have owned hotels here, Vieira says that, to his knowledge, no Native Hawaiian organizations have owned major hotels in the Islands. He adds that he can understand the appeal of having Native Hawaiian groups own hotels and be able to influence employees and the surrounding communities, but he thinks it’ll be difficult to break into the traditional resort space. There may be opportunities, however, to own hotels that focus on health, culture, ranching and other types of diversified tourism.

That’s a concept that Hilo designer Kūha‘o Zane explored about 10 years ago. His plan was to submit a proposal for an ‘āinabased hotel on Hawai‘i Island where guests would get a luxury hospitality experience and help grow the food they’d eat. The land he had his eye on became unavailable, so he never submitted his proposal.

Such experiences would connect visitors with the ‘āina, he says, “so that when you leave Hawai‘i, you feel like you have more of a connection to ‘āina. And that would be more of a goal of Hawaiian-owned hotels.”

Broken Barriers

It’s an anomaly for a hotel to have a Native Hawaiian general manager or director, says Mālia Sanders, luna ho‘okele (executive director) of the Native Hawaiian Hospitality Association. She can only count a handful of them in the Islands, so having a Native Hawaiian-owned hotel would be a significant breakthrough, she says.

About 47,000 Native Hawaiians work in tourism-intensive industries, accounting for nearly 20% of all workers in the sector, according to a 2023 report by the state Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism. Compared with all employees in the sector, Native Hawaiians are younger, more likely to be single and less likely to have a bachelor’s degree. They’re paid about 12% less than the average tourism worker.

“To have that representation is critical as the industry should be reflective of the community,” Sanders says. “Who knows Hawai‘i better than kānaka?”

Lewis, the CEO of the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement, says he’s been “hunting high and low” for a hotel for about four years.

“I feel like even if you start with a 12-unit or 15-unit or 20-unit hotel, you provide exceptional Hawaiian hospitality and they experience Hawai‘i, whether it’s being greeted by a hula dancer or having an enriching experience, then the other hotels will start to follow,” he says.

A couple of years ago, CNHA established its Kilohana tourism division. The word “kilohana” refers to the outer layer of kapa and represents the finest of Hawai‘i, Lewis says. That’s what he envisions for a CNHA-owned hotel – the furniture, stories, visitor experiences, employees, management of resources and community involvement would embody Hawai‘i and its values.

“From a cultural lens, it means the elements of Hawaiian culture that are often commodified and sold, maybe they look more like intentional incorporations into the way in which the hotel does business,” says Tyler Iokepa Gomes, chief administrator of Kilohana. “And I think the intentionality is sort of the highlight there.”

That intention also translates to caring for the surrounding community. Lewis says he would want a CNHA-owned hotel to have a line item in its budget for community contributions.

“These hotels have kuleana, the businesses that are benefiting from the visitor industry, our culture,” Lewis says. “And the truth is Hawai‘i’s tourism industry is on the backs of Hawai‘i’s cultures, on the backs of our land. You need to contribute to that in order for it to continue to thrive. And that’s just not happening meaningfully. It’s going to shareholders.”

Lewis recognizes that the hotel industry has made progress in incorporating Hawaiian culture and hiring locals for leadership positions but says there’s too much focus on profit and not enough focus on providing genuine hospitality. The way to shift it back, he says, is for Native Hawaiian organizations like his to force themselves to the decision-making table, which is what CNHA has done by creating the Kilohana Hula Show. The show, a reimagining of the Kodak Hula Show that ran for 60 years, is an effort to revive authentic hula in Waikīkī.

“I’m not OK with the status quo,” he says. “I’m not OK with the trajectory that we’re currently on. And if there’s something we can do about it, then I’m going to try, at least.”

Embracing Hawaiian Values

Kepoikai Aluli, the co-op pioneer, sold his interests in the Hawaiiana Hotel in 1956 to Harry Meyer, who ran the property for 20 years. Maile Meyer is Harry Meyer’s daughter and Aluli’s niece. She says her father, who was from the Midwest, was mentored by Outrigger founder Roy Kelley and ran the Hawaiiana with a Hawaiian sense of place and hospitality.

She grew up with her parents inviting hotel guests for dinner at their Kailua home. Their relationships would be so close that her family would visit the guests at their homes in the continental U.S.

Maile Meyer’s father is an example of how non-Hawaiians in the industry can adopt a Hawaiian way of thinking. Kainoa Daines, senior director of destination education at the Hawai‘i Visitors and Convention Bureau, says it’s important for hotel owners and leaders to have that mindset. He adds that just because a hotel owner is Native Hawaiian doesn’t guarantee he or she will embrace Hawaiian values.

“When you see hotel general managers who may be from elsewhere but embrace and understand local values and they’re not just lip service, but they are living that lifestyle and making decisions based on that, then it really makes a difference,” he says.

He served on a cultural advisory committee when Disney’s Aulani resort was being planned. He saw members of Disney’s creative team, called Imagineers, come to Hawai‘i to learn about the language and culture. They also listened when cultural consultants pointed out elements of the resort that were inappropriate.

“When you go to Aulani, you do feel the Disney feeling,” he says, but when you look around, “you feel like they really applied their time by investing in the thinking process.”

The Kā‘anapali Beach Hotel is another example where nonHawaiian management embraced Hawaiian culture and values, he adds. That hotel is often called Hawai‘i’s “most Hawaiian hotel.” Its former longtime GM, Mike White, studied under Hawaiian cultural authority George Kanahele and created a training program in the 1980s for employees to learn about Hawaiian values, language, geography, food, music and history.

Vieira adds that the major hotels and mainland management companies have long understood the importance of embracing Hawaiian culture and giving back to the community. The annual Visitor Industry Charity Walk is a major fundraiser for local causes, and many Maui hotel owners provided shelter, funds and meals to employees and others displaced by the August 2023 Lahaina wildfire.

Major Landowners

The 18 hotels located on land owned by the three ali‘i trusts and the state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands include some of the Islands’ most prominent hotels, among them the Royal Hawaiian, Four Seasons Resort Hualālai, the Kahala Hotel & Resort, and Outrigger Waikiki. Two of the trusts and DHHL plan to allow additional hotels to be built on their lands.

The Lili‘uokalani Trust plans to allow others to build two hotels with a combined 200 rooms in its planned 70-acre Makalapua Project District in Kailua-Kona. The trust was created in 1909 for the benefit of orphans and destitute children, with preference given to Native Hawaiians. It owns the land under the Waikiki Beach Marriott Resort & Spa. Representatives from the Lili‘uokalani Trust declined to be interviewed for this story.

DHHL Director Kali Watson says his department is exploring whether a 41-acre parcel in Wailua on Kaua‘i is a good fit for a master planned development that could include a hotel, as well as opportunities to support beneficiary businesses and farms and to integrate Hawaiian culture. He likens the idea to the Polynesian Cultural Center on O‘ahu.

“The reality is that tourist dollars are very instrumental in supporting our economy, and if we do it right, we can provide more than just a site for tourists to visit,” Watson says.

The 41-acre parcel is adjacent to the Hilton Garden Inn Wailua, which generates about $366,000 a year in lease revenue for DHHL. The department also owns the land under the Hampton Inn & Suites Kapolei.

Watson says the amount of lease rent the department receives from the Hampton Inn’s sublease is confidential at the hotel owner’s request, but the Ka Makana Ali‘i general lease overall brings in about $4.7 million a year. The department’s lease revenues support homestead development and the homestead associations around the state. The Hampton Inn primarily serves visitors from the Neighbor Islands, and its owners are considering building a second tower, he says.

In addition to Wailua, another potential site is 184 acres in Pu‘unēnē on Maui. Watson says that if the department decides to proceed with hotel development, it will work with private developers who would build and then own the structures.

“To get ownership, you have to invest in the development and pay for the hotel. That’s something we’re not interested in doing,” he says. “We’d rather have other people develop, design, construct and then pay us rent for that. It’s a lot more, I think, appropriate for our department.”

Market studies still need to be conducted to see if the areas can support additional hotels. Watson says the intent is to develop the parcels, which are largely underutilized, to maximize the amount of lease revenue going to the department and to create opportunities for Native Hawaiians. A few years ago, the department unsuccessfully proposed building a casino on its land to generate revenue.

Kamehameha Schools is considering building a culturally appropriate boutique hotel as part of its Keauhou Bay Master Plan. Harman wrote that 150 units of low-impact lodging would enable KS to generate funds, improve stewardship of the area, create economic opportunities for Kona kama‘āina, and encourage the community to enjoy and better appreciate the wahi pana (sacred places) of Keauhou and Kahalu‘u.

Current plans, which are not yet final, call for a heritage management corridor to protect the birth site of Kamehameha III and to link to other significant sites along the Kona Coast. It would also be used to promote Native Hawaiian identity.

Harman writes in her email that it’s important that KS, the community, government and businesses “challenge ourselves to innovate and explore regenerative visitor opportunities as part of sustainable community development in our Islands.”

KS currently owns the land under six hotels on O‘ahu and Hawai‘i Island. Jeff Mau, director of asset management for KS, declined to say how much revenue those land holdings generate but wrote in an email that the revenue supports the estate’s educational mission, and that KS is open to investments that can benefit that mission.

The Queen Emma Land Co. is a nonprofit that was created to support and advance health care via The Queen’s Health System. It owns the land under nine Waikīkī hotels.

Bruce Nakaoka, VP of the Queen Emma Land Co., wrote in an emailed statement that the company supports The Queen’s Health System by managing and enhancing the income-generating potential of the legacy lands on O‘ahu and Hawai‘i Island left to The Queen’s Hospital by Queen Emma in 1885, “balanced by our efforts to environmentally restore and sustain” the ‘āina. “QELC continues to look for opportunities to work with the community to be good stewards of the lands.”

Demand for Native Ownership

Visitors want the option of staying at Native Hawaiian-owned hotels, Sanders, of the Native Hawaiian Hospitality Association, says.

“They call all the time asking how they can spend their dollar responsibly, from start to finish of their vacation, not only just with the activities that they want to do, but with the place where they lay their head,” she says.

It’s hard to tell them that option doesn’t exist, she says. And she explains to them that some hotels are situated on Native Hawaiian-owned land, and that by staying at those hotels, some of their money goes to support Native Hawaiian programs.

Sanders, a board member of the American Indian Alaska Native Tourism Association, sees Native Hawaiian-owned hotels as a way for Hawaiians to exercise sovereignty. She says Indigenous groups elsewhere in the U.S. have built and owned casinos and hotels to support their members and to help build and repair hospitals and other infrastructure in those communities.

Daines, of the Hawai‘i Visitors and Convention Bureau, is the official emcee for AIANTA’s annual American Indigenous Tourism Conference. He says that it’s nice to see their cultures live because of the revenue generated from those properties.

Local models exist for Native Hawaiians and local communities to directly receive tourism dollars, Hilo designer Zane says. He cites Hā‘ena on Kaua‘i’s North Shore, where two community nonprofits manage access to the state park and use the revenues to reinvest in the community.

Other examples include the aloha wear and hula industries, where Native Hawaiians have been able to flourish economically and share their unique stories. In those industries, Native Hawaiians have claimed part of the state’s economic pie, he says.

“If we were to have Native Hawaiian-owned hotels … economic justice would be at the top of the page of that, but at the same time, I think the authentic product of what is Hawai‘i would be so unique at that point, that you wouldn’t be able to get that anywhere else,” Zane says. “Like no Hilton, Rosewood, Four Seasons would be able to duplicate that product. And I think that also ensures our economic viability.”