Spent 4 nights early July 08 in an oceanfront deluxe room. For the rates that you pay, this hotel is overated. Apparently, the hotel has had $35m in renovations but you'd never know it!! The rooms in the hotel are pretty ordinary, particularly given that the room cost more than what I paid for Sheraton Maui which was LOVELY. The rooms have this hideous green colour interior, the carpet is a very yucky brown and the bed made me feel like I was staying in a motel. The bathroom has a pretty silly layout with essentially two rooms (one which has a sink, fridge and robes and the other is the actual bathroom with another sink, toilet and shower). Hideous light green tiles around the bath. Made me feel like I was back in the 80s. If they had done the soft renovations properly, they would have opened up these 2 rooms to make one big bathroom and changed the tiles. On the plus side, the bedroom is quite big and the views were great (if you disregard the horrible brown roof tops visible from the restaurants etc below - who on earth thought the beautiful ocean views need this brown roof top in the picture???? Loved the views from the poolside where big waves sailed past and we could watch people surf past us. Its on a really lovely spot, its just that the resort is still dated and after staying at the Westin Moana Surfrider and Sheraton Maui, it was a huge disappointment.

Other positives are that the service was pretty good and the Ola restaurant was really nice, we had a table right on the sand.

Overall, I think 4 nights was way too long. 2 nights maximum (unless you surf) is what I think was needed if you want to stay up this way. As its the only resort up that way, its a good base to explore everything and again the views from the pool and walking around the hotel are pretty amazing. But DONT expect much from the rooms and the lobby.

I pre-paid for our two nights at Turtle Bay. When I received my bill I had 2 charges of $20 as what they call a "resort fee". They say it covers parking, internet access, and tennis. We didn't use these. We had one car between two couples but both of us were charged the $40. I plan on disputing the charge with my credit card company.

The restaurant food in the resort was also highly overpriced. The OLA restaurant was good and reasonable for a resort but it is not run by Turtle Bay. The room and view were good but overpriced and we paid less than $210 per night. Some were paying $450 per night and higher.

Jim
Kentucky

My husband, me and our 3 yo son just returned from a seven night stay at turtle bay resort. My husband and I consider ourselves seasoned travelers and have stayed at great hotels including many four seasons and ritz carltons so we were expecting a lot for 800.00/night. The cottages on the property were beautiful. I didnt see the other rooms but the main tower didnt look great. Our cottage was directly on the beach which was great as some are farther away. We had booked a king cottage but upon check in were given a queen one with two queen beds. Was kind of upset but it worked out better having two queen beds since our son was with us. The first day we returned to the room around 1 pm and the room was not made up. We didnt receive turn down the first 2 nights. The third I called before we left for dinner and asked for turn down. We returned 2 hours later around 8:30 and had no turn down, I called housekeeping twice and the front desk twice and finally got it. I called the manager and he assured us it would not happen again and it didnt. OUt last day there my son cut himself on a glass he broke in three places. he was bleeding quit profusely and i called for some bandaids. After two calls and 30 minutes i received them. I called and asked why it took so long and was simply told there were very busy since it was july 4th. Kind of annoying. I wasnt very impressed with the service.
The beach area was nice but again it was difficult t get someone to set up chairs for you. They kind of expected you to do it. I also didnt like that they didnt come around with water since it was very hot.
The pool was nice but can get very overcrowded.
The restaurants was not so great especially the breakfast buffet. THe lady that sat us for the buffet was very weird. she told us one day that the air quality was bad and we should stay in since we had a child. i overheard her telling someone else that if the tourist keep coming they would not be any aloha. Um lady, tourisim pays your salary and keeps the state going. Strange that they would have someone like that working there.
The food at Ola was actually quite good and loved its location.
All in all it was a good stay but were going to the four season maui next year where my 7K hotel bill will give me great service on top of a great room.

I last visited Turtle Bay when it was a Hilton property back in the 80s. Considerable development of the area has gone on since then, and it now feels a bit hemmed in. While we were there, I read that the state is considering buying out the remaining developable land in the area to prevent additional development. We did not stay at the resort but went for an afternoon visit to have massages at Spa Luana followed by dinner at Ola restaurant. The parking area was packed to overflowing so it seemed easiest to use valet parking. The valet got huge brownie points (and a big tip) when he was willing to run back to the car to pick up the folder containing our SpaFinder gift certificates (hint: you can buy these at a discount through Costco and use them at Spa Luana). Finding the spa itself was confusing. We had to wander through a maze on two levels, which could've been improve by signage. Its location seemed like an afterthought. Then, our massages, while adequate, seemed a bit rushed. We paid extra for the "beachside" massage in a small outdoor hut, but we ended up with the massage therapists knocking at the door urging us to hurry while we were dressing because it was going to rain. And it did! ...enough so that the leaky roof at Ola restaurant, which is not at all as upscale as the Web site might imply, left water dripping in. It also seems like an afterthought, in a glassed-in enclosure adjacent to the hotel and beach. Again, thanks to the valets: they loaned us an umbrella! The floor was cement and sandy from the day's diners, and the food and atmosphere certainly did not command the prices. Our waitress was one of those sort who had perpetual bad timing and interrupted our conversation numerous times in a fairly transparent effort to sell us more drinks. As I said, I haven't been there in a long time, but after this experience I wouldn't go out of my way to go back.