Formerly known as the Waikiki Sand Villa Hotel, Wayfinder Waikiki is under new ownership and underwent a renovation before opening in January 2023. This 228 room is located on the Ala Wai Canal and is about a 10 minute walk from the beach. In this post, we share a review of Wayfinder Waikiki based on our stay.

Location: 17/10

Wayfinder Waikiki is located along the Ala Wai Canal area and is a short 10 minute walk to the beach. It’s also centrally located in the heart of Waikiki, near many restaurants and shops. It is a 10 minute drive to Diamond Head, a 20 minute drive to the airport, and a 20 minute drive to Hanauma Bay. It is also a short walk to the The Bus stop and there is a Biki station across the street. While not located on the beach, Wayfinder Waikiki is conveniently located.

Bed and Sleep Quality: 13/20

We booked the highest category of room: a Corner King Room with Lanai. The bed was the best part of the room: the mattress and linens were very comfortable. Unfortunately, Wayfinder Waikiki suffers from problems many Waikiki hotels face – it is difficult to escape noise in general. Our room was on the 11^th floor but we still heard the traffic most hours of the night on the Ala Wai Canal, which out of the hotel’s control. However, the glass patio doors are old and flimsy and result in rattling and whistling noises from the steady breezes on this side of Waikiki. The air conditioning was also very loud: it sounded like a lawnmower starting at times.  

Room and Room Amenities: 15/20

Overall, we were very happy with our Corner King Room with Lanai. It was spacious, had nice views, a large balcony, and had comfortable indoor and outdoor furniture. The room has a very fun style for the vintage Hawaiian look that is very stylish and trendy now. While the room was renovated, most of the renovations were for aesthetics and there is already paint peeling off the ceiling near the air conditioning unit and other deficiencies in the room.

The room had good WIFI, a TV, a large safe, mini fridge that works well, bath robes, a yoga mat, books, a portable speaker, and a neat record with hotel information. The room did not have a coffee or tea machine and despite charging a resort fee.

Bathroom: 6/10

Like many hotels in Hawaii, the bathroom here is of the original design and has just been updated for style. We generally don’t care much about large bathrooms – but this one was very small and dark. The shower had good water pressure, but it is a shower tub combo (we would have preferred a shower only given the size). While being recently renovated, there were moldy spots in the tile grout already. They provide Grown Alchemist bath products, which is a nice touch. Overall, the bathroom is what we’ve come to expect for older (renovated) hotels in Waikiki.

Hotel public areas and amenities: 8/10

The hotel gets high marks for its public areas and amenities as everything is open air and stylish. There is a café onsite, as well as a Redfish restaurant, and a pool bar with snacks called Lost and Found. The pool area is very small for the number of rooms and gets crowded quickly (but this is again very common for hotels in Waikiki). If you can avoid the busy times, the pool area is otherwise well-designed and very pleasant for a quick swim. The gym is also small but well stocked and enjoyable for workouts. The hotels also offers a number of free and paid activities, like fitness and art classes, tours in a moke, an excursion to a farm for lunch, and DJ sets by the pool on some evenings.  They also provide beach towels, chairs, umbrellas, and boogie boards for guests.

We had coffee from B Side Coffee Bar and enjoyed it (although it was a little expensive). We also had drinks from the pool bar and found the cocktails to be good and the beer selection impressive. We had a happy hour at Redfish and enjoyed the drinks and food.

*Resort fee warning – if you despise these mandatory daily fees as much as we do, you won’t be happy to hear that the resort-fee force is strong at Wayfinder Waikiki. The resort fee was waived as part of the package we booked though.  

Service and Staff: 2/10

This is where the hotel really let us down. We generally aren’t looking for much more than the basics when it comes to service, but the general impression we got from the staff was a sense of indifference at best. In some cases, it actually felt like they were annoyed by simple questions and may have been happier if guests just left them alone. At departure, our credit card was charged before we checked out (without being able to review our additional charges). Even getting a copy of our receipt showing these charges proved to be too much for the front desk, who seemed to want us to just go away.  Afterwards, calls and emails to the hotel were not answered, and it was only after contacting the PR company through IG that we finally got a response and our billing issue resolved.

Housekeeping was very good and offered daily. We also had an issue with our room safe that was resolved quickly by maintenance. We also found the service at the bar and restaurant to be very good but the café was hit and miss.

Overall Value: 6/10

Wayfinder Waikiki is new and perhaps they are still working through some kinks, but we are pretty disappointed by some aspects of our stay. The pricing was competitive against other Waikiki offerings, and we were willing to overlook some of the downsides but ultimately the checkout (and post-checkout) experience was just too negative. The hotel is investing heavily into their PR and utilizing social media influencers, but the poor service and noisy doors need to be improved. 

We were lucky to book an opening special package but pricing has already started to increase. Based on our first experience, we would not pay the increased rates to stay here.  

Overall: 67/100

Would weleavetoday to go back? Probably not. 

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