Iconic Kona Village Resort Is Reborn as a Rosewood

The Polynesian village-theme Kona Village Resort opened in 1965, and for many years it was a Hollywood-favorite establishment on Hawaii’s Large Island. However extreme injury from a tsunami pressured the enduring property to shutter in 2011 — and it remained closed till this summer season.

That’s when Rosewood, which took over the reins, formally reopened the well-loved property on July 1 as a modernized resort in the identical spirit as the unique. The brand new Kona Village, a Rosewood Resort, combines trendy luxuries with cherished elements of the legacy lodging (together with a few of the similar structure, and a beloved seaside bar) — in addition to an emphasis on sustainability and environmental accountability.

“[It was] essential for us to carry the previous and the current collectively within the reinvented property,” basic supervisor Sandra Estornell tells The Hollywood Reporter. 

She explains that within the first months since opening, many previous company have already returned for a keep and voiced their approval of the Rosewood’s loyal overhaul. “It’s very refreshing to listen to that they might even have a pleasant sense of nonetheless the outdated Kona Village, that it hasn’t modified a lot” — besides in fact for the considerably elevated expertise. Lodging begin at $1,800 a night (different reserving alternatives out there at booking.com, expedia.com and hotels.com)

The Large Island’s Solely All-Hale Resort

Kona Village stays the one lodge property on the island that has visitor lodging within the type of particular person hale (homes), 150 small buildings in all; a number of have preserved the unique footprint. “We protected the essential structure of the rooms, the muse, and we simply constructed upon that,” Estornell says. 

And this format is a part of what makes the keep so particular. Vary managing associate Natalie Bruss, one in every of Rosewood’s early company, tells THR of her current keep, “It’s exceptional [that] the property is in the identical footprint because the precise historical fishing village that existed on this web site.” 

“Due to this structure, in addition to the additional care taken to protect cultural and environmental websites all all through the property, when you find yourself there, you’re feeling like you’re immersed in an actual village.” Bruss notes the perfect steadiness of the privateness afforded by a person hale, alongside gathering areas all through the property that “have the colourful feeling of the middle of all of it.”

Sustainable and Environmentally Linked 

The property makes use of sustainable, native supplies as a lot as attainable whereas nonetheless preserving the look from the previous. The Rosewood property employs recycled plastic for all of the thatching, reinforcing it with pure woods from the island. The resort operates nearly totally on solar energy, and treats wastewater on web site for irrigation. Plentiful native crops create a lush surroundings all through.

General, it’s a largely outside expertise, interacting seamlessly with the pure surroundings. (Visitor lodging nonetheless lack TVs, besides on request.) “You simply come out to your stairs and you’ve got your seaside proper there — you don’t see that wherever [else] on the island,” the resort’s basic supervisor says. Bruss confirms following her household’s keep in a beachfront hale: “I’ve by no means fallen asleep to the waves crashing fairly like I skilled in that exceptional setting.”

Many company even come again to remain at their most popular favourite rooms from the property’s earlier incarnation, Estornell says: “We’ve company who request particular lodging: ‘I need hale 17 as a result of that’s the place we was once.’ It’s enjoyable having individuals return to the unique lodging and reconnect.”

Persevering with a Hollywood Legacy

The resort is steeped in wealthy Hollywood historical past. “Due to the privateness, it was an incredible hideaway from everyone,” Estornell says. “This was one of many locations that individuals would come and loosen up and escape the world.” 

And — though the property wouldn’t verify names — its historical past as a star magnet is properly documented. Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedwick, George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Whitney Houston, and so many others are amongst previous guests.

It was additionally famously a favourite trip vacation spot for Steve Jobs, and Bruss remembers talking with pals who knew the tech icon. “He spoke about it as probably the most particular, sacred place to him,” she says. “We met a ton of households throughout our keep who had grown up making an annual pilgrimage they usually had been so keen about how respectful and considerate the renovations had been; [they] felt just like the architects and lodge employees went out of their approach to pay homage to the historical past of the place and other people.”

Past simply the visitor lodging, different iconic elements of the unique will really feel acquainted to return company. One such ingredient is the Shipwreck Bar, comprised of the boat the property’s founders Johnno and Helen Jackson had been crusing once they had been on the lookout for a spot to settle within the Nineteen Sixties, finally establishing a mattress and breakfast on the placement. Later, that boat sank, so the pair dragged it onto the seaside and transformed it into a preferred bar, however the 2011 tsunami destroyed it.

The Rosewood rebuilt the Shipwreck Bar from its scraps and positioned it proper again within the beachside house that initially housed it, positioned deliberately to border the sundown. “We truly took one visitor to see the Shipwreck Bar, they usually began crying proper there,” Estornell says.

Scroll on for additional photographs of Kona Village, A Rosewood Resort on the Large Island: