Green vistas. Farm-to-table dining. Wave action spread far and wide.
Add access to scenery that some say boosts spiritual well-being and increases cultural connectivity, and a growing pool of yogis and other sports and wellness practitioners offering a range of feel-good activities, and you’ve got Oahu’s new North Shore.
While the North Shore is hardly an undiscovered paradise, a rush of wellness visitors has begun to broaden the scope of its visitor market beyond the summer family crowds and winter big-wave tourists.
"We’ve got tourists year-round now," said Spencer Deavila, who has been a surf instructor for Hans Hedemann Surf School at Turtle Bay for nearly four years. "I’ve seen my business triple in activity since I started. We were slammed this Christmas. Before, we only needed about four instructors to handle our peak seasons. This year we needed 10 surf instructors to handle the holiday crowds."
Repositioning Turtle Bay Resort to capitalize on the health-minded visitors has improved hotel performance, said General Manager Danna Holck.
"In 2012 we averaged 88 percent occupancy, and in 2013, when one-third of our rooms were out of inventory for renovations, we were running occupancies above 90 percent," Holck said.
Demand also has lifted Turtle Bay’s average room price by about $50 from last year and put it ahead of its competitive set, which includes the Kahala Resort and beachfront Waikiki properties like Hilton Hawaiian Village, Sheraton Waikiki, the Westin Moana Surfrider and the Royal Hawaiian Hotel.
"People are really looking for a place where they can chill out and retreat from the stress in their life," Holck said. "We aim to give that to them."
The success of Turtle Bay Resort in pulling a strong base of visitors nearly year-round also has provided new direction for other North Shore visitor industry leaders, like Polynesian Cultural Center and Kualoa Ranch, and has created startup opportunities for smaller North Shore farms and businesses.
The Polynesian Cultural Center recently revised its Hawaii Village to focus on showing how the sustainability of the ahupuaa land utilization system used by ancient Hawaiians was essential to their wellness, said Alfred Grace, PCC president and CEO.
"Finding wellness is an escape from the worries of daily life. We provide that by having visitors immerse themselves in the cultural experiences and natural elements of our island villages. They interact with the native people of Polynesia and through this interaction learn about their heritage and the values that have been ingrained in their culture for thousands of years," Grace said. "It’s stimulating emotionally and invigorating for the spirit and, for many visitors, reminds them of what matters most in their lives."
Kualoa Ranch also has begun catering to the North Shore’s wellness crowds. The ranch, which was once the war crafts training ground for Hawaii’s royalty, is developing a celebrated cultural site for group wellness events. It also has planted a crop of Buddha’s hand, a medicinal fruited tree, for eventual use on wellness hikes and tours. The fruit of the shrub, which is a fragrant citrus, resembles a closed hand symbolizing the act of prayer.
IF YOU GO … WANDERLUST
Where: Turtle Bay Resort, 57-091 Kamehameha Highway When: Feb. 27 to March 2 What: Hotel retreat, camping, yoga, surfing and music festival Cost: $25 each for Friday and Saturday night concerts at Kuilima Point; yoga tickets range from $95 for one day to $480 for four-day all access passes, which include the concerts. Sea-to-table chef’s dinner on March 1 is $108. Other activities are a la carte. Lodging: Room rates start at $239 per night. Or, pay $150 per person for a five-night pass to pitch your own tent on the beach. Contact: 293-6000, oahu.wanderlustfestival.com/experience/about-wanderlust
CELEBRATING THE BOUNTY OF THE ANCIENT HAWAIIAN FISH POND
Where: Kualoa Ranch, 49-227 Kamehameha Highway When: Jan. 18, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. What: Kualoa Ranch showcases the ahupuaa of Hakipuu with food vendors, live entertainment and storytelling, Hawaiian arts and craft demos, surfboard shaping and poi pounding. Cost: $5 to $59 depending on the type of pass purchased and age of guest Contact: 237-7321, www.kualoa.com
DISCOVER YOURSELF BY GOING NATIVE
Where: Polynesian Cultural Center, 55-370 Kamehameha Highway What: Go on a wellness journey of self-discovery. Try your hand at spear throwing, canoe racing and authentic cooking. Learn how the Hawaiians used the stars to navigate and how Samoan villagers make fire. Cost: Prices start at $39.95 for adults and $23.95 for children Contact: 800-367-7060, www.polynesia.com
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"I recently led a Jungle Expedition tour with 10 Buddist monks. They didn’t bring cameras because they don’t have that stuff, but they were in awe of the mountains and the valleys. They recognized that this is a very special place. I find that a lot of tourists connect to the spiritual side," said Brandon Allen, a Kualoa Ranch sales representative. "We even hosted a luncheon for the Dalai Lama on his trip to Oahu."
Valerie King, Kualoa Ranch’s director of marketing and business development, said that the kind of moments Allen described align with the company’s mission to enrich people’s lives.
"We feel when they come here that they get a feeling of being connected to the land, and that’s very healing," King said. "We are getting a lot more requests from groups to plan wellness types of excursions for them."
Skip Taylor, a consultant for RePlay Resorts, Turtle Bay Resort’s asset and hotel manager, said health and wellness are at the core of some $40 million in recent hotel renovations.
"Although we like people who sit by the pool and drink mai tais, that shouldn’t be their primary activity," Taylor said. "We’ve seen a pickup in people who have a different sense of core values, and they come here because they know that health and wellness permeate everything that we do."
The resort is adding a solar power system that will produce 8 percent of its energy, and revising its lighting and cooling systems, which will save $1.2 million in energy costs annually.
Reducing tourism’s carbon footprint is important to wellness guests like the 1,500 or so yogis who will descend on Turtle Bay for the Wanderlust festival from Feb. 27 to March 2.
"We have a big greening program at all of our events," said Sean Hoess, who along with business partner Jeff Krasno launched the first Wanderlust events in California in 2009. "Travel is travel, so obviously there’ll be carbon, but we do offsets."
Wanderlust participants will partner with Sustainable Coastlines Hawaii to volunteer at a giant beach cleanup, and Hoess is looking for a local solar company to supply the event’s electrical needs, Hoess said. The event emphasizes farm-to-table food and will bring in local yoga, fitness and wellness instructors and vendors, he added.
Turtle Bay Executive Chef Conrad Aquino said the resort serves about 60 percent local food with a goal to increase that to 70 percent.
"Ultimately our goal is for the hotel and restaurant to be self-sustaining," Aquino said. "We are also working to make all of our menus more wellness-oriented. I’m a local boy, so it was a real wake-up call to see the direction that people are going, even the surfers."
Aquino said the resort shut down Leonardo’s, an Italian restaurant, in February and reopened it in June as Kula Grille, which relies on about five local farms to supply produce for its signature menu items. In May the resort opened Paakai, a sea-to-table restaurant that replaced the resort’s former 21 Degrees dining experience.
Turtle Bay also upgraded its lobby and guest rooms; introduced Surfer, the Bar; and transformed an underutilized ballroom into a fitness center with panoramic ocean views. The overhaul also doubled the space of the hotel’s spa, which reopened in April as the Nalu Kinetic Spa and even boasts Hawaii’s first "wave" table, which tilts 7 degrees to the left and right and 7 degrees to the front and back, simulating the bounce of the ocean.