#13 in Top 20 Maui for A Family Holiday · ★★★★
Honua Kai Resort and Spa
Full kitchens, multi-bedroom apartment-style — the family with grandparents trip.
Full kitchens, multi-bedroom apartment-style — the family with grandparents trip.
"Full kitchens, multi-bedroom apartment-style — the family with grandparents trip."
Honua Kai Resort and Spa is the all-suite, full-kitchen condo-resort on the north end of Ka'anapali (Kahekili Beach, immediately north of the Sheraton Maui's Black Rock) — opened in 2009 as one of the newer Maui resort properties. Six hundred and twenty-eight suites across three towers (Honua Kai, Hokulani, and Konea), with the working family-flagship being the Three-Bedroom Suite (1,500-2,200 square feet, three bedrooms, full kitchen, washer-dryer). The asset is the resort-with-condo combination — the property has the working family-resort infrastructure (multi-pool complex with the Aquatic Playground waterslide-and-children's-features pool, the Honua Kai Spa, the in-house Duke's Beach House restaurant) AND the all-suite-with-kitchen condo product, which is the working family-of-six-or-eight infrastructure. Honua Kai is the right pick for the family holiday with grandparents (the multi-generational eight-person trip) where the working centerpiece is the three-bedroom suite with kitchen — the kitchen handles breakfast and lunch, the resort handles the pool-and-dinner-and-luau programme, and the Kahekili Beach snorkel-from-Black-Rock access is the same as the Sheraton next door.
Three-Bedroom Hokulani Suite (the multi-generational flagship) or Two-Bedroom Honua Kai Suite for the family-of-six option.
Three-Bedroom Hokulani Suite for the multi-generational booking — the corner unit with the wraparound view is the working asset. Use the kitchen for breakfast and one lunch per day. Snorkel from the north side of Black Rock at 7am.
Honua Kai Resort and Spa sits within our broader Top 20 Hotels in Maui for a Family Holiday list. It scored an aggregate 9.4/10 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 Ka'anapali North, west 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. The best suites with the right view orientation go first, and inventory for the popular months is quoted in months, not weeks. Suite-level rooms with private plunge pools or terraces — the ones that earn this rank — are typically the first to sell out.