Four Seasons Resort Maui at Wailea Review

Service

When it's quiet the service is superb, and when it's packed it's good, a step behind the best Four Seasons resorts. You get a lei and a cold drink before you've reached the desk, and a lot of the team have been here twenty years or more, which you can tell. They pick up your name without making a show of it, and the concierge desk is very good at finding a sunset table.

My favourite part is how much is handed to you by the pool, with sunscreen, cold towels, little smoothies and fruit coming round through the day, and cabanas that are mostly free. I'd sign up for the outrigger canoe paddle from the beach on day one, and in winter you may well find yourself sitting among whales.

This is a 380-room resort that takes a lot of group and corporate business, and in a full week you feel it. Breakfast can mean a 15 or 20 minute wait, the front desk can be stretched, and rooms aren't always ready at check-in time.

Rooms

The rooms are big, but the older ones are tired, so I'd only book a finished one. Even the entry-level rooms are around 600 square feet, with a furnished lanai, a marble bathroom with a separate tub and shower, and a very good bed, and the king rooms have a sofa bed, which is why families like it here. The old look is all brown and beige with the odd worn edge, and the building is being redone in sections until mid-December 2026, with daytime drilling near the works. Ask for a finished room well away from them, and get that confirmed before you travel.

Skip Mountain-Side, because the name flatters it. Many of those rooms look at the roof of the service car park and the road, with the pickleball courts in earshot. Garden-View is a fair saving, and some catch a slice of sea, but the one I'd book is an Ocean-View room on a high floor, so you can watch the sun go down over the water from your own lanai.

The Club Floor, reopened in May 2026 in a much lighter, more Hawaiian style, is the treat, with a private check-in and its own lounge for breakfast, afternoon tea, evening bites and drinks. If you're travelling with children, the Executive Suite has a door between the bedroom and the living room, and that door is worth every dollar.

Food and drink

For a resort, the eating is strong, and Ferraro's is the one I'd choose first. It's open to the air right above the beach, and lunch there in a swimsuit and a shirt is exactly what I want from Hawaii. At night it turns Italian, with handmade pasta and the sound of the waves, so book a table for just before sunset. Before dinner, the Lobby Lounge has drinks, live music and hula as the sun drops into the sea.

Komo, the small Japanese restaurant off the lobby, is my pick for a second special dinner, with a 14-seat sushi bar and fish flown in from Japan. It only opens from 5 to 9, so reserve before you arrive. Spago is the big night out, and you should order the spicy ahi poke cones, but the bill can run ahead of the cooking, so I'd go once.

Breakfast at Duo is a big buffet, generous though not thrilling, and the birds will take a pastry off your plate if you look away. The pool food is ordinary and pricey, and for a quick coffee I'd go to the new Pantry cafe.

Setting

The beach is the reason to stay. Wailea Beach is a wide crescent of soft gold sand with calm, clear water and turtles at the rocky ends, on the sunny, dry side of Maui, and your loungers, umbrellas and towels are set up for you. It's public, like every beach in Hawaii, so you share it with the Grand Wailea, and nobody can serve you on the sand, so lunch means walking back up.

The Fountain Pool is the handsome main one, and the Waterfall Pool has a small slide for little ones. The adults-only Serenity Pool, an infinity pool with a swim-up bar and music under the water, is lovely and too small for the hotel. In busy weeks people queue before it opens at 7, and although the pool team now checks you in and gives up your chair if you vanish for an hour, I'd still go early. For a rainy hour, the new Kai Holo Spa, opened in July 2026 with hot and cold pools, saunas and steam, is the best plan in Wailea.

Value

No, not right now. Expect from around $1,000 a night in the quieter months for an entry room and $1,500 and up for an ocean view, and a great deal more over Christmas and New Year, when there are minimum stays. Since 1 July 2026 there's a $55 nightly resort fee, covering the spa's thermal pools, the canoe outings and the cultural classes, and parking is valet only and charged nightly. The cabanas, the kids' club and the snorkel gear are still included, and you get the best beach and service in Wailea, but at these prices I'd only pay for a finished room, ideally in January after the holidays or from late August to October, the calmest and best-priced weeks.

The all-suite Fairmont Kea Lani gives you more space for less money. The Andaz is younger and more modern, with better restaurants and a smaller bill, and an ocean-view room there is the one I'd book.