Peter Savio, a 50-year
Hawaii real estate developer, is finally making good on his decade-old promise to significantly grow the Pagoda hotel brand.
Savio, who owns the Pagoda Hotel and the Pagoda Floating Restaurant in Honolulu, is adding Waikiki and Hilo properties to the brand. Joining the lineup are the
Pagoda Waikiki, a 60-room garden-style property at
260 Beachwalk Ave., and the 145-room Pagoda Hilo Bay, a curved midrise building at 121 Banyan Drive.
The Savio Group doesn’t own these latest properties, but decided to bring them into the Pagoda brand because the opportunities presented themselves, said Savio, president and CEO of the Savio Group.
Savio Group managed the Pagoda Waikiki building as a dorm, but Savio said he asked for a longer-term lease to manage it as a
hotel. A condominium association asked the group to take over the Pagoda Hilo Bay, which was operating on land that is leased from the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, and manage it as a hotel, he said.
Savio said the Hilo property is on a month-to-month lease with the state, but he plans to bid for a longer-
term lease. If successful, he expects to invest another $12 million to $25 million upgrading the property, which has ocean views.
Savio said he also is negotiating to purchase two undisclosed properties to join the chain and expects within the next two years that Pagoda hotels will be in Honolulu, on Maui, in Kona, in Hilo and on Kauai.
It was the fall of 2010 when Savio bought the
359-room Pagoda Hotel and Pagoda Floating Restaurant from HTH Corp. for an undisclosed price. The budget property, which once was part of the late hotelier Herbert Hayashi’s holding, is known for its koi ponds, 21 pagodas, a floating restaurant and teahouses.
“It’s an iconic brand that everyone in Hawaii tends to know,” Savio said. “It’s a quality budget hotel that has a pretty well-established local identity but also attracts visitors from Japan and South Korea. Historically, it didn’t get a lot of mainland or Canadian travelers, but that market has started to grow now that Southwest Airlines has come into the picture. Southwest has more budget travelers — actually, some of them tend to be wealthy, but they don’t need a $500-a-night room.”
Savio said the Maui Beach Hotel, which he owns a part of, spent five years under the Pagoda brand. However, it dropped the Pagoda branding about a year ago after he brought investors into that property to raise money for the current
Pagoda expansion.