LAHAINA, Hawaii — Six-year-old twins Luna and Stella Sanchez smile and giggle as they run toward the century-old rubber tree, affectionately known as “The Branches,” that sits in the heart of the Royal Lahaina Resort & Bungalows.
They enjoy playing under the tree’s 75-foot canopy, which provides shelter from the harsh sun and other elements. It wasn’t that long ago that the entire resort provided shelter to the girls, their brother Asher and their parents, Amy Sanchez and Jacob Ah Puck, who were displaced when the ohana home they were renting was lost in the devastating Lahaina wildfires.
Ah Puck, who has worked as a bell valet attendant at Royal Lahaina for 13 years, said, “We lived here for almost 10 months, so the girls love to come back to play. Staying here meant the world and more to us.”
Now the family lives in temporary housing in Lahaina. It’s a step toward normalcy while they wait for more permanent low-income housing to become available.
The Royal Lahaina, which was the first Maui resort to take in fire survivors, is evolving, too, along with the rest of Maui hotels that housed some 3,100 households (about 8,000 people) at the peak of the state noncongregated shelter program run by American Red Cross and mostly paid for by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, better known as FEMA.
While many Maui hotels, especially in West Maui, are transitioning back to a leisure travel and group business focus, the transition is more involved for the Royal Lahaina resort, which was all in until its contractual obligations ended at the end of June.
Royal Lahaina Hotel Manager Yvette Kitagawa and Stephen Hinck, area managing director — Hawaii Highgate, who were on property when the fire broke out, said the resort’s first mission was to take care of Royal Lahaina guests and employees, many of whom were unsure of the status of homes or loved ones.
They also had to relocate guests and employees before the fire took the Makai Sunset Inn, a boutique Lahaina property that Highgate managed for Continental Assets Management.
Power and phones were out, so it was hard to communicate in the early days of the disaster. Hinck recalled finally getting a call out to Highgate Hawaii President Kelly Sanders.
“I had about 30 seconds to tell him what was going on, and then I asked him to call my wife and tell her that I’m alive,” he said.
Kitagawa shed fresh tears as she recalled a private moment when Hinck found her on the second day of the disaster bawling because she couldn’t find her father, Baye Balmores, who worked as the Royal Lahaina’s executive sous-chef and lived on the property when she was a child.
Kitagawa recalls that Hinck hugged her and told her, “It’s going to be OK.”
Twenty-five minutes later it was. Kitagawa remembers the relief she felt when her daughter called and said, “Papa’s here.”
“He lived like right on Front Street in these apartments, and he said if he would have taken a right turn out of his apartment that he would have been stuck in all that traffic. He actually saved two neighbors.”
Kitagawa said she gave thanks and then immediately got back to work as more and more community members turned to the resort for food and shelter.
“I didn’t go home for week and a half. We slept in our cars or offices or wherever we could lay our heads down,” she said. “Our community has always been there for the Royal Lahaina because it’s one of the oldest properties. We have a lot of longevity just in our employees. To be able to take care of some of the kupuna that I grew up with as a little girl, that was an honor to me.”
All told, the resort housed 526 families, a total of 1,008 residents, including 83 employees, over the 10 months. The oldest fire survivor in the resort’s Red Cross noncongregate shelter program was 92 years old, and the youngest was born during the time that the family stayed at the resort.
From after the Aug. 8, 2023, fires to July 27, the resort extended 142,684 room nights to fire survivors and served more than 390,000 meals.
Kitagawa said the property quickly transformed to make fire survivors more comfortable. The arrival area became the school pickup and drop-off lane for fourth to 12th grade students, who attended Princess Nahi‘ena‘ena, Sacred Heart, Lahaina Intermediate and Lahainaluna High School.
She said Royal Lahaina also welcomed the Department of Education and provided space where students could visit tutors, see counselors and receive tech support for online schooling and homework.
Hinck said the ballroom and banquet rooms became a full-service resource center offering everything from school and extracurricular activities to after-school programming to medical services and grief counseling to yoga and healing classes to theater and music to workforce development.
Kitagawa said the hotel offered free pony rides for the keiki once a month and held a holiday toy drive. It held kanikapila music nights every Monday at “The Branches.”
Now that the community sheltering program has ended for Royal Lahaina, it is investing in the future like many other Maui properties. The resort has appointed a new executive leadership and restarted millions of dollars in enhancements to the property, which include upgrades to its 127 bungalows and the tower suites and premier poolside amenities, including oceanfront leisure seating.
On Sept. 3, Royal Lahaina Resort will debut a new oceanfront restaurant, Lahaina Noon, and a new poolside bar, Pineapple Moon. Both new restaurants are part of Highgate’s partnership with TableOne Hospitality, led by renowned restaurateur Patric Yumul.
“This is one of the bigger investments for this hotel, and we plan to make more,” Hinck said.
Additional expansive investments include wedding facilities, an enhanced spa and a Maui artisan boutique.
The resort is enlivened seven nights a week with its oceanfront luau, the Myths of Maui. On Oct. 27 it is hosting a dedicated pickleball tournament as part of the Maui Food and Wine Festival. Sanders also is working on a vision to transform “The Branches” into a gathering place for the community and visitors.
Joshua Hargrove, general manager of the Westin Maui Resort & Spa, said the property, which had 440 out of 600 available rooms in disaster housing at the peak, also is transitioning back to the leisure and group business with significant reinvestment.
“We were just coming off a $160 million renovation when the fires happened. We got the last rooms back from renovations in February, so we have 769 rooms (available) now, and we opened Ulu Kitchen by Merriman in March. And the Social Space, an arcade and bespoke food and beverage venue, opened July 8.
“This is the most beautiful that the Westin Maui has ever looked,” he said. “We are well positioned. We just need the right messaging to draw people in.”
Angela Vento, general manager of the Wailea Beach Resort, said the resort transitioned back to the leisure market in October.
“We took care of the immediate needs (of fire survivors and emergency workers), and then a lot of that moved to the west side,” Vento said.
Afterward, she said, the level of group business on the books in Wailea through the first quarter helped sustain more normalcy, but “as we’ve continued to go on and with just the recovery efforts, we’ve seen that the awareness of Maui has diminished for travel a bit.”
Vento said she has been traveling monthly to invite visitors back to the resort, which has renewed its emphasis on restorative and outdoor experiences.
Vento said, “One of the restorative elements that has really taken its legs as the resort has come out of the recovery” is Olakino, a wellness sanctuary experience that includes culinary refreshments and guided wellness experiences in a private poolside setting.
She said the resort’s “Po‘e Malama” (translated as ‘”one who takes care”) is dedicated to personalizing an agenda during the daylong experience, which runs from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. The experience, which opens and ends with an oli (chant), also could include music, farm-to-table food and wellness treatments.
Last Christmas the resort also introduced a new room category with the introduction of 12 sundeck garden oasis rooms.
“We took ground-floor rooms on the tower of our hotel and created these outdoor lanais that include stone patios, fire pits, outdoor seating areas and outdoor shower and tub experience. So we took a room and almost doubled the size of it with these outdoor terraces,” she said.
Vento said the resort has made technology and sustainability investments, and began a soft-goods renovation in June. She said so far, 100 rooms have been completed, with all 547 rooms expected to be done by early 2025. A particular emphasis was on upgrading lanai to add to the outdoor experience.
Fire survivor Tracy Ompoy, who works at the Marriott Maui Ocean Club, said many workers as well as hotels are ready to receive visitors again.
Ompoy said her family suffered greatly as a result of the fires, which caused the death of family members Vanessa and Narciso “Ciso” Baylosis Jr. and took five family homes. But she is not conflicted about the reopening of tourism like some Maui residents.
“I’m grateful for the generosity of the Maui hotels that helped provide shelter and jobs, and I’m grateful to the guests,” she said.
Since the fires, Ompoy said, she has become best friends with Shamane Wells, a frequent visitor from Utah. They spent part of the anniversary of the Aug. 8, 2023, fires at the Kahana Boat Ramp reminiscing with the good Samaritans who came after the fires to bring Maui supplies from other islands.
“The visitors have brought a lot of blessings,” Ompoy said.
