OUTRIGGER Waikīkī Beach Resort has completed the reimagining of its guestrooms, and they are now available to book. The milestone marks the first guest-facing moment of a $100 million transformation that is remaking the resort group’s original flagship as a design-led destination at the birthplace of modern surf culture. Guests booking today are among the first to experience the work firsthand and to watch a legacy property evolve in real time.
Steve Miller, General Manager of OUTRIGGER Waikīkī Beach Resort, said hosts have been welcoming guests to the beach for nearly sixty years. ‘What people tell us when they return is that it feels like coming home. Our resort rooms are now all new, but that feeling isn’t,’ he said.
Designed from the sand up
Design studio PowerStrip worked with WCIT Architecture and DTL, a Hawaiian strategy studio, on rooms that draw every material and motif from the land, water and living history of Waikīkī. Woven basket screens replace solid walls, filling the rooms with natural light and drawing the eye towards the ocean. A soft palette of sun-washed woods and pastels echoes the surf, sky and sunset light, while rugs carry the sand pattern left by a retreating wave.
Each room is anchored by ‘He keiki aloha nā mea kanu’, a custom mural of Queen Emma’s lily garden by native Hawaiian artist Kamea Hadar, a reference to the ali’i who once owned and tended the very ground beneath the resort. In the corridors, room numbers are paired with surf photography by Zak Noyle, and graphic rivulets inspired by the Āpuakēhau Stream trace a winding path along the full length of the property.
A sense of place before the water
Dayna Lee, principal at PowerStrip Studio, said every choice in the rooms begins with what was there first: the stream, the garden and the sand. ‘Āpuakēhau translates to basket of dew, and you feel it in the woven basket wall as you enter, in the rivulets running the length of the corridor, in the pattern a wave leaves behind. We wanted guests to sense the geography of this place before they ever reach the water,’ she said.
The approach continues OUTRIGGER’s wider journey. The privately held hospitality company has charted more than 75 years of expansion from Hawai’i to premier resort destinations including Fiji, Mauritius, Thailand and the Maldives, and its flagship property now carries that depth of experience in its fabric.
Bookings open for the first chapter
The guestrooms are the opening chapter of a transformation that will continue across the resort in the seasons ahead. Each stage is being shaped around the same brief: a design-led destination that honours the living history of Waikīkī rather than replacing it, from the ali’i who once owned the ground to the surf culture that made the beach famous.
Visitors planning a Waikīkī stay can book the new rooms now and experience the first completed piece of a landmark project on one of the world’s most famous beaches. For a resort trading on almost six decades of welcome, the familiar feeling of coming home now comes with an entirely new address above it.