By Julietta Jameson
The new 1 Hotel Hanalei Bay lies in Princeville, a 3642-hectare resort town in the lush north of Kauai island.
Roman columns and marble lobby be gone – a celebrity-favoured resort dating to the mid-1980s on the Hawaiian island of Kauai has undergone a $500 million transformation to become the new flagship for the growing eco-luxury group, 1 Hotels.
Reimagining the St Regis Princeville Resort (as it was in its most recent incarnation) was a labour of love for 1 Hotels' founder and chairman Barry Sternlicht, an American billionaire and co-founder of Starwood Capital Group.
"What makes the opening of this property such a special moment for me is that my family and I vacationed in the area for decades," he says.
The property's 252 airy rooms, including 51 suites, were designed to evoke nature.
The Sternlichts aren't alone. The new 1 Hotel Hanalei Bay lies in Princeville, a 3642-hectare resort town in the lush north of Kauai. Hanalei Bay is said to be the inspiration for the song Puff the Magic Dragon and was long a haven for surfers and hippies and its lush green rises as a backdrop in movies such as Raiders of the Lost Ark and Jurassic Park.
If Australians are not familiar with the 1 Hotels brand, they soon will be – Melbourne is due to get one of the wellness, culinary and sustainable luxury-focused properties in 2025.
1 Hotels was launched in 2015 with American openings in Miami's South Beach and Manhattan's Central Park, followed by Brooklyn in 2017 and West Hollywood in 2019, then Sanya in China in 2020, Toronto, Canada in 2021, the US cities of San Francisco and Nashville in 2022 and most recently the Hanalei Bay flagship property.
1 Hotels core ethos is: "Those that travel the world should also care about it." To live up to that, 1 Hotels makes aims to channel nature through design, food, wellness, local connection and sustainability – along with a thick layer of high-end luxury.
Sternlicht's concern when he first visited the previous property was that it stuck out from nature. The new design aims to meld it in.
Most of the old lobby building was removed to create an open-air entranceway with streams and gardens, reclaimed teak joists, puka lava stone walls and ceilings hand-woven from locally-sourced abaca, a natural leaf fibre.
Indigenous plants were brought in to begin to camouflage the structures into their cliffside site as part of a multi-year conservation plan replacing non-native and invasive species with vegetation friendly to wildlife and Polynesian culture.
The property's 252 airy rooms, including 51 suites, likewise were designed to evoke nature and "a sense of sacred place" with handcrafted floors fashioned from local black basalt, reclaimed teak and abaca furniture.
Sustainability practices included opting for reconstruction over new construction where possible and salvaging 136 tonnes of furniture, fixtures, equipment, and other materials for reuse.
1 Hotel Hanalei Bay is aiming to operate as 100 per cent Certified Carbon Neutral and to be TRUE zero-waste certified (total resource use and efficiency), in-line with the brand's other US properties.
Along with Melbourne, the brand has properties under development in London; Cabo San Lucas, Mexico; Paris; Elounda Hills in Crete; Austin, Texas, in the US; Copenhagen, Denmark and in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
See 1hotels.com
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