Wailea will be home to luxury hotel nameplate Baccarat
reprinted courtesy Maui News 7/6/07
WAILEA – Wailea will be the launching pad for a new worldwide nameplate of luxury hotels, to be called Baccarat after the French maker of crystal for kings.
Physically, the plan for rebuilding the Renaissance Wailea Beach Resort is not materially changed from what was presented to the Maui Planning Commission in 2005, when the remade resort was to go under another luxury nameplate, St. Regis.
Negotiations with St. Regis fell through, according to Elton Wong of Kobayashi Group, a minority owner of the hotel.
Principal owner Starwood Capital Group also owns the French group that owns the maker of Baccarat (pronounced Back-a-rah) glass as well as 14 superluxury hotels in France and Switzerland.
It was looking for special properties to turn into another line of upscale hotels. Voila!
The whole thing is somewhat inbred. Starwood Capital is not related to Starwood Hotels & Resorts, which owns and is promoting the St. Regis brand, also based on an already established luxury nameplate, in this case a hotel in Manhattan.
However, Starwood Capital’s chief executive, Barry Sternlicht, is a former CEO of Starwood Hotels, where he was behind such new luxury nameplates as W and St. Regis.
While the Wailea Baccarat will be a premium hotel, it will be “five stars, not six,” says Wong.
That would take the location, if not the resort, back to its finest days, when, as the Stouffer Wailea Beach Resort, it attained AAA Five Diamond status.
No rating service gives six stars or diamonds, but since about the turn of the century there has been a trend toward claiming “six-star status” by some hotels.
“Six star” hotels have huge rooms, often more than 600 square feet. The Baccarat replacement for the Renaissance would easily qualify on that count – plans are for one-room units of 1,000 square feet at a minimum. That’s twice as large as a standard Maui ohana cottage.
There will be a spa, of course. All luxury Maui resorts now have to have their spas.
But royal treatment such as being picked up by a Rolls-Royce taxi is not in the cards. (Hawaii, in a way, pioneered in six-star extravagance well before the term gained currency around 2002. Chris Hemmeter had guests delivered to his fantasy resort on Kauai in horse-drawn carriages.)
According to Starwood Capital, “each Baccarat Hotel will be unmistakably unique, designed to draw upon its surroundings while upholding the passionate attention to detail one would expect from the Baccarat name.”
It goes on, “Every shimmering detail will radiate elegance, from luminous expansive rooms and residences, which will number from 80 to 250 per property, to luxurious furnishings, which will feature signature Baccarat chandeliers.”
The Wailea Baccarat will have 193 units, down from 345 when it opened as the Wailea Beach in 1978.
Wong says demolition permits for the resort will be requested soon. The new resort is expected to open in 2010.
No price of the project was announced, but when the rebuilding as a St. Regis was presented 20 months ago, it was presented as a $250 million project. At that time, the rebuilding was expected to be done by 2008.
As in the St. Regis plan, the resort will be divided into condominiums. Owners could live in theirs full-time, but it is expected that most will be put into an operating pool as hotel rooms.
The plan, in 13 low-rise buildings, includes units up to four bedrooms.
Starwood Capital, based in Greenwich, Conn., acquired Baccarat as part of its control of Societe Du Louvre in 2005. Societe Du Louvre, in turn, is part of Groupe Taittinger, a champagne firm that also manages 800 economy hotels in Europe.
Starwood Capital is developing three international luxury chains.
Besides Baccarat, they are the Crillon (named after a famous hotel in Paris) and 1 Hotels & Resorts.
Harry Eagar
can be reached at heagar@mauinews.com
reprinted courtesy Maui News 7/6/07
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