Hawaii, Kona Hilton

The Kona Hilton was a beautiful hotel where we have spent 10 or 12 nights on the Kona coast of the Big Island of Hawaii, during three of our visits to the State of Hawaii. According to Google, what we knew as the Kona Hilton, is now known as the Royal Kona Resort.

As we checked out of the hotel one Sunday morning, on our way to the airport in Hilo for the flight home, there was a long line at the one cashier who was open, but a bunch of Hilton people were just standing back of the check-in desk, doing nothing. I got the attention of a uniformed man behind the check-in desk, tossed him the key, and said good-by. Within moments we were being “paged” over the public address system. I told Emmy, “Forget it, they already have our credit card number and they will use it to pay the bill.”

A week or so later we got a letter from Hilton with some comment about our bill and the fact that we did not check-out, but admitted the bill was paid. I wrote a letter to the Hotel Manager telling him that this was not the first morning some guest had checked out of a Hilton Hotel someplace in the world, and he could be sure we weren’t going to spend part of our short vacation time waiting for them to figure how to do it right. I got a very nice response from the manager saying that he agreed with me, he understood, and hoped they could do better next time. These days computers make checking into and out of hotels much easier.

A side story. The weather at this part of Hawaii is so nice that they don’t have outside walls on the first floor near the check-in desk, at the restaurant, or around the bar-nightclub. As you can imagine, no way would Hilton lose food and bar business, or disrupt check-in and check-out if the wind and rain might be a problem, but that’s not a problem on the Kona Coast. Just a delightful place, beautiful weather, and a most interesting hotel design. A few miles up the coast, weather and hotel design are completely different, and on other islands, even more different! Well enough of that.