Hawaii’s hotel industry did not begin on a beach. It began on the rim of an active volcano, in a one-room grass hut, 55 years before the first luxury hotel rose on the shores of Waikiki. The story of Hawaii’s earliest hotels is a story of adventurers, literary giants, Greek immigrants, shipping magnates, and one of the most dramatic arcs in American hospitality history.
Several of these historic properties are still operating today. You can book a room at the same hotel where Mark Twain slept, sip a drink under the banyan tree that hosted 40 years of live radio broadcasts, or walk the halls of a pink palace built by the company that created Hawaiian tourism itself.
Here are the hotels that made Hawaii a destination — and where to find them now.
Volcano House — 1846, Big Island
The oldest hotel site in Hawaii sits 4,000 feet above sea level on the rim of Kilauea Caldera, inside what is now Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. There has been a guest house here, in one form or another, since 1846 — making this the longest continuously operating lodging in the Hawaiian Islands.
The first structure was a one-room grass shelter built by Benjamin Pitman around 1846, offering basic refuge to the adventurous souls who made the arduous journey to see Kilauea’s fires. It was not luxury. It was barely shelter. But it was the beginning.
By 1866, a more substantial wood-frame building with four bedrooms stood on the site. This is the Volcano House that Mark Twain visited during his four months in Hawaii as a correspondent for the Sacramento Union. Twain wrote 25 letters from the islands. He called Kilauea’s lava lake a vision of brilliant fire and described it as one of the most spectacular natural sights he had ever witnessed.
In 1877, George W.C. Jones commissioned a larger wood-sided building with six guest rooms. That 1877 structure still stands today — it was eventually sawn off at the roofline and relocated back from the cliff edge, and now houses the Volcano Art Center Gallery. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Greek Who Ran a Volcano Hotel
The most colorful chapter in Volcano House history belongs to George Lycurgus — born near Sparta, Greece in 1858, he arrived in New York via steerage in 1877 and worked his way west to Hawaii by 1881. He purchased Volcano House in December 1904, and during the Great Depression bought it again as the sole bidder for just $300 in 1932.
Known as “Uncle George,” Lycurgus ran the hotel for 65 years until his death in 1959. He was not simply a hotelier — he was a personality, a fixture of Big Island life, and a man who understood that the volcano itself was the attraction. His guest book reads like a who’s who of the 20th century: Jack London visited in 1907, along with Queen Lili’uokalani, King Kalakaua, Amelia Earhart, and Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Truman, Kennedy, and Nixon.
The hotel’s famous fireplace was said to have burned continuously since 1877. Ripley’s Believe It or Not featured the claim in 1935. When a kitchen fire destroyed the hotel on February 11, 1940, embers were carefully carried to the surviving 1877 building to keep the flame alive. The fire was finally allowed to go out on New Year’s Day 2010, when the hotel closed for a major renovation.
Volcano House Today
After a $7 million renovation, Volcano House reopened in June 2013 with 33 guest rooms, 10 cabins, and 16 campsites. It remains the only hotel inside Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. Rooms run approximately $301 to $435 per night, and the Rim Restaurant offers what may be the most dramatic dining view in Hawaii — looking directly into the caldera. It is actively bookable and a unique experience unlike any resort on the coast.
Sans Souci — 1893, Waikiki
Before the grand hotels came to Waikiki, there was a modest beachside lodging named with a French phrase meaning “without care.” George Lycurgus — the same Greek who would later run Volcano House — opened the Sans Souci in 1893 by converting the former Herbert family home into a seaside hotel.
Its most famous guest arrived in September 1893: Robert Louis Stevenson, already gravely ill with the tuberculosis that would kill him the following year. Stevenson stayed five weeks and left an endorsement in the hotel register that became one of the earliest celebrity hotel testimonials, praising the scenery, quiet, sea water, food, and sunsets.
The original Sans Souci hotel was demolished in 1927. The site passed through several owners before a 15-story apartment building replaced it in 1960. But the stretch of beach still carries the Sans Souci name, and the spiritual successor to the original hotel stands nearby.
The Kaimana Beach Hotel
The Kaimana Beach Hotel, originally built in 1903 on the adjacent McInerny family site, occupies the same stretch of Sans Souci Beach. It was renovated into a nine-story, 156-room hotel in 1964 with investment from Japan’s New Otani Hotel group. The property has since dropped the “New Otani” name and undergone modern renovations.
Its Hau Tree Lanai restaurant references the hau trees that Stevenson sat beneath, and the hotel consciously trades on the literary connection. Rooms start at roughly $145 per night — a fraction of what the historic Waikiki properties charge — making it one of the most affordable ways to stay on a historic beach in Hawaii.
Moana Hotel — 1901, Waikiki
The Moana was Waikiki’s first true luxury hotel, and the building that transformed the district from a quiet residential area into a tourist destination. It opened on March 11, 1901, and has been welcoming guests continuously for over 125 years.
The man behind it was Walter Chamberlain Peacock, an Englishman born in Lancaster in 1858 who arrived in Hawaii around 1881 and made his fortune in the liquor wholesale business. Peacock incorporated the Moana Hotel Company in 1896 with $150,000 in capital and hired architect Oliver G. Traphagen — Duluth, Minnesota’s most prolific architect of the 1880s and ’90s, who had moved to Hawaii in 1897 for his daughter’s health.
The result was a Beaux-Arts Colonial masterpiece with 75 guest rooms, each with a telephone and private bath — luxuries that were unusual for the era. It featured a billiard room, parlor, library, salon, and the first electric-powered elevator in the Territory of Hawaii, which is still in use today. The hotel had its own ice plant and electric generators. First guests — a group of Shriners — paid $1.50 per night.
The Banyan Tree and Hawaii Calls
In 1904, three years after the hotel opened, Jared Smith of the Department of Agriculture Experiment Station planted a banyan tree in the hotel’s courtyard. That tree now spans approximately 150 feet and defines the Banyan Court — one of the most photographed spots in Waikiki.
It was beneath this tree that Webley Edwards created Hawaii Calls in 1935 — a live radio show that broadcast Hawaiian music from the Moana’s courtyard to the world. The first broadcast went out via shortwave on July 3, 1935. At its peak, Hawaii Calls aired on 750 radio stations worldwide, doing more to shape the global image of Hawaii than perhaps any other single cultural product. The show ran for 40 years until 1975. Edwards’ ashes were scattered in the waters off Waikiki near the Moana’s banyan tree.
The Moana Today
The hotel changed hands multiple times — Peacock sold it in 1905, Matson Navigation acquired controlling interest in 1925, and Sheraton purchased it in 1959. A $50 million restoration in 1989 returned the original 1901 wing to its turn-of-the-century appearance, and the property was inducted into Historic Hotels of America.
Today it operates as the Moana Surfrider, A Westin Resort & Spa, with 793 rooms across three wings. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is universally known as “The First Lady of Waikiki.” Rates run approximately $264 to $600+ per night.
Pioneer Inn — 1901, Lahaina, Maui
In the same year the Moana opened in Waikiki, a very different kind of hotel appeared on a very different island. The Pioneer Inn was built in 1901 in Lahaina, Maui, by George Alan Freeland — a British-born former Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer who, legend has it, came to Hawaii in pursuit of a fugitive and never left.
The two-story Hawaiian Plantation-style building with 34 rooms overlooked Lahaina Harbor, where 400 whaling ships once anchored regularly. There were no other hotels on Maui. The Pioneer Inn was it — the first and only dedicated lodging on the island.
The hotel survived the 1919 Lahaina fire that destroyed much of the town’s business district, the 1946 tidal wave, and Hurricane Iniki in 1992. Its lobby displayed original house rules that became beloved Hawaii lore. It was inducted into Historic Hotels of America in 2016 as the oldest continuously operating hotel in the state.
Lost to Fire, Waiting to Rise
On August 9, 2023, the Lahaina wildfire destroyed the Pioneer Inn along with much of historic Lahaina town. All staff and guests were evacuated safely, but the building — 122 years of continuous operation — was lost.
The Freeland family descendants intend to rebuild, but as of early 2026, complex permitting issues and the broader Lahaina reconstruction challenges mean the timeline remains uncertain. Nobody on Front Street has rebuilt anything yet. The Pioneer Inn is not currently bookable, but its story is worth knowing — and worth revisiting when Lahaina rises again.
Halekulani — 1907, Waikiki
The name means “house befitting heaven” in Hawaiian, and the hotel has spent over a century trying to live up to it.
The site’s story begins in 1883, when Robert Lewers built a two-story house on the Waikiki beachfront. Local fishermen would bring their canoes onto the beach to rest, and the Lewers family was so welcoming that the community named the spot “Hale Ku Lani.” In 1907, Edward Irwin converted the property into a small residential hotel called “Hau Tree,” comprising the beachfront home and five plantation-style bungalows.
In 1917, Juliet and Clifford Kimball purchased the hotel, expanded it, and formally adopted the Hawaiian name. In the 1930s, architect C.W. Dickey — who would later design the replacement Volcano House after the 1940 fire — evolved the property into a refined plantation-mansion structure.
One guest deserves particular mention: Admiral Husband Kimmel, Commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, dined at Halekulani on the evening of December 6, 1941 — the night before the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Halekulani Today
In 1981, Japanese real estate firm Mitsui Fudosan acquired the property and invested approximately $115 to $125 million in a complete redevelopment. The new 16-story, 453-room Halekulani opened in March 1984. Only the 1931 Dickey building was preserved.
The hotel is known for its swimming pool floor, which depicts a Cattleya orchid using 1.25 million South African glass mosaic tiles, and for House Without a Key — a restaurant named after an Earl Derr Biggers Charlie Chan novel, set oceanside beneath a kiawe tree. Notably, Halekulani charges no resort fee, a rarity in modern Waikiki.
Rates start at approximately $500 per night. It is a member of The Leading Hotels of the World, owned by Mitsui Fudosan through Halekulani Corporation, and fully bookable.
Royal Hawaiian Hotel — 1927, Waikiki
The Pink Palace of the Pacific is the hotel that made Waikiki an international destination — and the story of how it got built reveals more about Hawaiian tourism than any guidebook.
In 1925, Matson Navigation Company partnered with Castle & Cooke — one of Hawaii’s powerful “Big Five” companies — on a three-part luxury tourism plan: build the fastest ocean liner for Hawaiian service (the SS Malolo), construct a landmark beach resort, and establish an exclusive golf club (Waialae Country Club). The hotel was the centerpiece.
Matson contracted Warren and Wetmore, the acclaimed New York architectural firm that had designed Grand Central Terminal, the Ritz-Carlton, and the Biltmore. For the Royal Hawaiian, they created a sprawling Spanish-Moorish Colonial Revival design. The bright pink stucco facade was inspired by the Rudolph Valentino Arabian films popular at the time, with cupolas resembling Spanish Mission bell towers.
The cost was over $4 million in 1927 dollars. The hotel opened on February 1, 1927 with a black-tie gala attended by over 1,200 guests. It had 400 rooms, each with bath and balcony, surrounded by 15 acres of landscaped gardens.
The War Years
In January 1942, the U.S. Navy leased the Royal Hawaiian as an R&R center, primarily for the submarine service. Concertina wire blocked civilian beach access. Blackout measures dimmed the pink facade at night. The Coconut Grove cocktail bar became a soda fountain. The tennis court became a basketball court. A baseball diamond was built on the grounds.
Over 200,000 servicemen stayed during the war, with as many as 5,500 service-related visitors passing through daily. Sailors stayed an average of 10 days, three per room. The Navy lease ended October 31, 1945.
The Royal Hawaiian Today
The hotel passed through Sheraton’s ownership in 1959, then to Japanese industrialist Kenji Osano’s Kyo-ya Company in 1974. After a major renovation and closure from June 2008 to January 2009, it reopened as part of Marriott’s Luxury Collection brand.
Today the Royal Hawaiian has 528 rooms with 34 suites across six stories. It features the historic Mai Tai Bar (where the drink was popularized in Hawaii), the Royal Hawaiian Bakery, and Aha Aina — Waikiki’s only oceanfront luau. It is a member of Historic Hotels of America. Rates range from approximately $442 to $806+ per night, plus a $61 resort fee.
A Timeline of Hawaii’s First Hotels
- 1846: Volcano House — grass hut on the rim of Kilauea (Big Island)
- 1888: Park Beach Hotel — Waikiki’s first seaside hotel (no longer standing)
- 1893: Sans Souci — where Robert Louis Stevenson stayed (demolished 1927)
- 1901: Moana Hotel — “The First Lady of Waikiki” (still operating)
- 1901: Pioneer Inn — first hotel on Maui (destroyed in 2023 Lahaina fire)
- 1907: Halekulani — “House Befitting Heaven” (rebuilt 1984, still operating)
- 1927: Royal Hawaiian — “The Pink Palace of the Pacific” (still operating)
Where to Stay in History
Four of these historic properties are fully bookable today, spanning a wide price range:
- Kaimana Beach Hotel (Sans Souci Beach) — from ~$145/night — the most affordable historic option
- Moana Surfrider — from ~$264/night — Waikiki’s original luxury hotel
- Volcano House — from ~$301/night — the only hotel in a national park
- Royal Hawaiian — from ~$442/night — the iconic Pink Palace
- Halekulani — from ~$500/night — no resort fee, the quiet luxury option
Each one offers something no modern resort can replicate: a connection to the actual history of how Hawaii became a destination. When you walk through the Moana’s lobby past its original elevator, or sit by the fireplace at Volcano House, or look up at the Royal Hawaiian’s pink facade at sunset, you are standing in the places where Hawaiian tourism was invented.
This article is part of our Hawaii Tourism History series. Read more: Is Waikiki Beach Man-Made?