Mauna Kea did not start with a pool, nor a golf course, nor a spa, or even a hotel. The Kohala Coast in 1965 was not yet a destination. It was lava rock and dry heat and a clear, glistening bay. Our story simply begins with Laurance Rockefeller, the resort’s founder, looking down from an airplane at the crescent-shaped coast. From that height, the white-sand beach flanked by lush greenery and dark volcanic formations stood out against everything he had already seen. When the development of the land begin, Rockefeller’s vision from the beginning was to ensure this hotel was aligned with the land it was built on.
Rockefeller planted a single ulu tree the year the hotel opened. He spent years acquiring art from Hawaii, Asia, and the Pacific, several hundred pieces eventually, and rather than sealing it behind glass, he hung it in the hallways guests used to get to breakfast. Televisions, when they eventually arrived, had to be requested and wheeled into the room rather than mounted on the wall. The vision for this hotel did not seem to be to create something novel, shiny, or new. Instead, it appears as a successful attempt to integrate into the raw essence of Hawaii’s coastline.
In 2026, I flew over this same ocean, to celebrate the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel’s 60th anniversary. This moment coincided with their final stage of renovations, which have surpassed $200 million. With such substantial changes, including a brand new fitness center, spa, and adult pool, I was curious to see how the hotel would remain mindful of their legacy.
I noticed it before I had even checked in. The Main Lobby’s original blue tile, the same color as the Pacific just outside the doors, had been preserved. A breeze from the beach reached me before I could even see where it was coming from. The furniture was mid-century and felt lived in and authentic, rather than staged. This was a carefully elevated experience, and it looked less like a renovation performed for new guests and more like a renovation kept honest for the ones who have been returning here for decades.
There is a garden now, spanning over twenty eight thousand square feet, growing on the property near where the golf course meets the residential edge of the resort. It is called the ‘Ulu Garden, and more than 45 varieties of produce grow there. Here, vibrant leafy greens, fragrant herbs, and succulent fruits are all ripening on the season’s schedule. The hotel’s executive chef, Peter Abarcar, built the garden in partnership with a local farmer, Ronen Maman of ‘Io Farms, and the two of them created something of an ecosystem. The organic methods, water conservation, and waste reduction, are all built to help give back to the land it’s built on.
Food is not just about nourishment,” Abarcar has said. “It’s a vital part of Hawaiian hospitality, a tradition that reflects the spirit and culture of the islands.” Manta’s chef de cuisine, Bryan Nagao, a Michelin Plate Award winner from his years in Hong Kong, put it more plainly still: “Our restaurant is offering a true hyper-local food experience, made with ingredients freshly harvested directly from our resort’s garden. It reflects our deep commitment to sustainability and providing the most flavorful produce directly to each guest’s plate.”
The garden is not the only part of this hotel that feeds the guests. The art collection nourishes you as well.
Rockefeller did not simply decorate this hotel. He built a collection, more than five hundred pieces eventually, spanning roughly eight hundred years, gathered from Hawaii, from Southeast Asia, from across the Pacific Rim. Once that was done, he did not put it behind glass. He put it where people were staying. A guest at Mauna Kea in 1965, or in 2026, can walk past history on the way to dinner.
The restoration of that collection has been underway since 2016, in partnership with the Bishop Museum, and it is slow, closer to conservation science than to interior design. A specialist working on an eighteenth century Japanese tansu, a mobile storage chest, built his own electrolysis machine by hand to clean the original iron hardware, and when parts were too far gone to save, he sourced replacements from the same town in Japan where the chest had originally been made.
A floor up, you can see an array of Hawaiian quilts in the seventh floor gallery. There’s thirty of them, created by quilter Meali’i Kalama. There’s something close to two million stitches across the collection, each one built around a different floral motif, hibiscus, silversword, the resort’s own signature orange plumeria. They are, by the hotel’s own account, tied to a specific historical moment, worn as an expression of loyalty to Queen Lili’uokalani during the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy.
Now, let’s look at something new.
The Mauna Keas spa, opening this spring, is built around a Hawaiian concept called Ho’ōla i Loko, that healing that begins within and moves outward. The treatments open with a traditional oli and a chant. The lava stones used in the signature massages are gathered by hand from the coastline. Spa Director Psalm Quinn, who has spent more than twenty five years in luxury spas across the islands, described the intention this way: “We are seeking to create an experience that is both authentic to Hawaiian traditions and deeply transformative for our guests. Rooted in cultural integrity and guided by the spirit of the Mauna Kea name, Spa at Mauna Kea embodies a holistic approach to well-being that extends beyond the visit.” Craig Anderson, the resort’s vice president of operations, called it “a sanctuary where healing traditions and thoughtful design come together to create a deeper sense of connection to Hawai’i and its culture.”
The Lomilomi massage lived up to its reputation. The therapist’s hands moved without stopping, in long unbroken strokes, and it reminded me of the way the ocean had rocked me during my morning swim. I’ll admit I went in skeptical. My go-to is a deep tissue massage, as an attempt to undo the hours a day I spend on a computer. This massage felt too relaxing to have an impact on my pain, but the next morning, my usual tension was notably softened, without the ache that typically follows deep bodywork.
However, if you crave the burn of a good workout, the fitness center is right next door. It sits on the Promenade Level, beside the new adults-only infinity pool, open around the clock to anyone with a room key. There strength equipment, cardio machines, a rack of free weights, and a personal trainer available if you want one. It’s a spot to decompress, to breathe a little deeper, while still enjoying the hotel’s scenery through the floor-to-celing windows.
The gym isn’t the only place you can get active. The golf course is right on the ocean, with beautiful views no matter what hole you’re on. Robert Trent Jones Sr. designed it in 1964. Rees Jones updated it in 2008. Robert Trent Jones Jr. redesigned it again in 2024. Three generations of the same family, each one building on what the last one left behind, on the same eighteen holes, for sixty years.
But the best view on this property doesn’t reveal itself until after dark, once the games of golf are over and the last espresso martini has been served.
After dinner at the aptly named Manta restaurant, a stone path leads down to the water, where spotlights are angled into the shallows. These lights draw krill, which aren’t very interesting. But, those krill draw manta rays, hahalua in Hawaiian, animals with up to thirty foot wingspan and look like nothing you’ve seen before. Guests are invited to walk down and watch, and I did, standing at the rail with everyone else, waiting to see what the ocean would decide to do that night. It doesn’t feel manufactured, the hotel simply found a spot where this phenomenon happened and created an opportunity for guests to watch.
I went into the water itself, snorkeling in the Martina Wing of Manta Ray Advocates. James and Martina Wing run their advocacy work off this same stretch of coast, and they are exceptionally knowledgeable. Mauna Kea Beach hotel partnering with them to ensure an ethical and safe wildlife experience allowed me to feel confident going into it.
Wing was a clear expert and the perfect guide to lead a group of journalists into the dark waters of the Pacific Ocean. For some time, nothing happened. I simply looked out onto dark water, listening to the sound of my own breathing through the snorkel. This is, until someone said “I see one!”. A manta ray rose beneath us, close enough to make out the full shape of her against the light, one Wing had named after her own mother. She hung there, gliding in slow arcs under a group of strangers floating above her. I struggle to explain this moment of awe, to witness a creature in its element, while you’re so far from your own. A few tears landed in my scuba mask.
By the time I left, I had noted a blue tile floor, a single tree that had somehow grown into a twenty eight thousand square foot garden, a chest of drawers repaired with hardware sourced from the exact town in Japan where it was first built, a gallery of quilts carrying two million stitches and a fragment of a monarchy’s final days, and an ocean that shared a glimpse of its vastness with me. What I admire most about this renovation of Mauna Kea Beach Hotel is the way it wove these elements into the guest experience.None of the new additions felt tacked on. Not the pool, not the spa, nor the refreshed wing of guest rooms. Every single one felt aligned with what was already standing, rather than added on top of it.
I flew home the way Rockefeller once flew in, over the same water, low enough to still make out the shape of the coastline he must have seen from a very similar angle sixty years earlier. I thought about how rare it is for sixty years and two hundred million dollars, give or take, to pass through a place without changing what it fundamentally is. This renovation didn’t try to turn Mauna Kea into something different. Instead, it just allowed the hotel to become more completely itself.
