#2 in Top 20 Maui for A Family Holiday · ★★★★★
Grand Wailea, A Waldorf Astoria Resort
Hibiscus Pool maze with longest waterslides on the island, the children's-pool benchmark.
Hibiscus Pool maze with longest waterslides on the island, the children's-pool benchmark.
"Hibiscus Pool maze with longest waterslides on the island, the children's-pool benchmark."
Grand Wailea opened in 1991 as the Grand Hyatt Wailea and was rebranded as a Waldorf Astoria resort in 2014; today it is owned by BRE Hotels & Resorts and managed by Hilton under the Waldorf Astoria brand. It has 776 rooms across multiple buildings, with the upper-tier Napua Tower running as a hotel-within-a-hotel, private check-in and butler service. The draw is the Wailea Canyon Activity Pool, a multi-level complex of nine pools linked by slides, a lazy river and a water elevator, plus a children's beach-entry pool and a Wailea-Beach-fronting infinity pool. It is the most recognisable family-resort pool on Maui. Camp Grande is the kids'-club programme, and Spa Grande, at around 50,000 square feet, is one of the largest hotel spas in Hawaii. Grand Wailea is the pick for a family holiday built around the pools: the eleven-year-old's day is the canyon slides, the four-year-old's day is the children's pool, the parents' day is the lazy river with a cocktail. The trade-off is scale, this is the largest resort on Maui at 776 rooms, a big family hotel rather than a boutique one, so couples after quiet should look elsewhere.
Napua Tower King Suite (the hotel-within-a-hotel upgrade) or Two-Bedroom Suite for the family-of-four flagship.
Book the Volcano Slide for the eleven-year-old early in the trip, the slide is busiest 11am-2pm, get there at 9.30am. Camp Grande is the kids' club to book for the morning programme. The Napua Tower is worth the upgrade for the private pool and butler service away from the main resort scale.
Grand Wailea, A Waldorf Astoria Resort sits within our broader Top 20 Hotels in Maui for a Family Holiday list. It scored an aggregate 9.8/10 across the three editorial criteria, competitive against the field but, on a family holiday-specific factors, the angle above is what earned its rank. For the alternatives in the same Maui neighbourhood, see Wailea, south coast and adjacent. For a different city entirely, see the related lists below.
If you have already chosen the dates, our editor recommends booking the room twelve weeks ahead. Suites with the prime view angle sell through first; for peak months, availability is measured in months rather than weeks. It is the terrace and plunge-pool suites, the rooms this rank rests on, that book up soonest.
A ranked shortlist, a special offer worth booking, and the overpriced stay to skip. Straight from the editors.