My friend, Mel Kaneshige, retired last month. He was a senior vice president at Outrigger Enterprises and was the point person for working to amend the city’s zoning code to make it more attractive for hotel owners to upgrade properties and build new ones while preserving the best of Waikiki.
"Mel led the effort to build Waikiki Beach Walk, which was the first major redevelopment in Waikiki in decades," says Outrigger CEO David Carey. "It was the catalyst for the rejuvenation in Waikiki with over $3 billion in private investment in hotel and retail properties."
Kaneshige also has been a key player in expanding Outrigger to Australia, Guam, Fiji, Thailand, Mauritius, China, Vietnam, the Maldives and Okinawa.
At his retirement party, it occurred to me that Outrigger and other hotels in Hawaii have interesting stories about how they got their names, and that’s the focus of this week’s column.
But first a quiz: Which hotel took its name from a sign that was too expensive to remove? Which hotel was named for a private club?
Which hotel was named for Duke Kahanamoku?
Which hotel’s name means "diamond" in Hawaiian? Which is made up from the founder’s initials? Which was created by local fishermen who were thankful for the shade?
The Outrigger Canoe Club occupied the site between The Royal Hawaiian and the Moana hotels from 1908 until 1963. When its lease expired, it moved to the Diamond Head area.
Sheraton wanted the property and was in negotiations with the Queen Emma Foundation to work out a lease. They planned to build what they called the Sheraton Outrigger Waikiki there. Roy Kelley also expressed an interest in the property.
The negotiations bogged down when Sheraton thought it saw a new item inserted into the proposal: a $20,000-a-year increase in the lease rent after 10 years. The foundation said it was there all along.
While Sheraton regrouped to discuss what it should do, the Queen Emma Foundation called Kelley and apprised him of the situation. He agreed to meet the terms. Sheraton returned to find the lease was no longer available.
Kelley named his new hotel the Outrigger Waikiki, and his hotel chain, for the canoe club that resided on the site for more than 50 years.
THE THREE WORDS in the name Sheraton Moana Surfrider have interesting but separate stories.
The Sheraton name dates from 1937, when Ernest Henderson and Robert Moore took over the Stonehaven Hotel in Springfield, Mass.
They then bought another small hotel nearby that had a huge lighted sign on the roof that said "Sheraton."
They wanted to take it down but contractors told them the sign would be expensive to remove. Instead, they decided to keep it and call their chain Sheraton.
"Moana" means the "broad expanse of the sea." It is the oldest surviving hotel in Waikiki and dates from 1901. It’s been called the First Lady of Waikiki.
The Surf Rider Hotel was built by Matson in 1952. It was named for surfing legend Duke Kahanamoku. Duke highlighted the hotel’s grand opening by taking a swim in the pool. Seven years later, it became part of the Moana and is now its Diamond Head Wing.
Local developer Charlie Pietsch partnered with Conrad Hilton to build a hotel equal to The Royal Hawaiian but not in Waikiki. A Hilton executive wanted to call it the Waialae Hilton. Pietsch wanted it to be called the Kahala Hilton.
They debated for six months until Pietsch challenged him to spell Waialae. He couldn’t. They settled on Kahala by default, which can refer to the hala or pandanus tree, or to the kahala fish.
Aston Hotels and Resorts operated as the Hotel Corporation of the Pacific from 1959 until 1986 when its founder, Andre S. Tatibouet, started looking for a better name.
Tatibouet noticed that many hotel names ended in "ton" like Sheraton and Hilton. He wanted a name that would be at the beginning of the alphabet so it would appear early in the yellow pages and other lists. "A __ ton."
He went through all the letters, "b, c, d, e … Afton …Agton … Ahton …" looking for something interesting. Nothing fit until "s." "Aston" had a nice ring, he thought, and "AST" also happened to be his initials.
The Kaimana Beach Hotel opened in the late 1940s. The area was a favorite hangout of Robert Louis Stevenson, who enjoyed the shade of the hau tree at the McInerny residence more than 110 years ago.
"Kaimana" means "diamond" in Hawaiian and refers to the hotel’s quiet yet accessible location at the foot of Diamond Head.
The Halekulani Hotel began in the home of Robert Lewers in 1907. Lewers had built a two-story cottage on the beach in Waikiki in the days when the area’s population consisted of more ducks than people.
Local fishermen whom Lewers had welcomed to rest under a giant hau tree gave his home the name Halekulani — "house befitting heaven." Edward Irwin leased the property from the Lewers family and opened the Hau Tree Hotel in 1907.
Haleiwa Hotel proprietors Juliet and Clifford Kimball purchased the hotel and its 5 acres of prime oceanfront property in 1917 and renamed it the Halekulani Hotel.
There are many more interesting stories about local hotel names, but I’ll save them for future columns.
