Ala Moana Hotel

Noisy but nice

We stayed in Room 3508 for 7 consecutive days in October 2007.

On Friday night, we were awakened at 1:45 a.m. by loud music. We called the front desk three times from 1:45 a.m. until 2:15 a.m. The front desk told us in the first two calls that they had sent Security up to stop the noise because other guests had also complained about the same thing.

On our third phone call at 2:15 a..m. they told us that Security needed time to resolve the problem. I then went downstairs to the front desk to complain about this. The front desk said the noise was music from the restaurant above our room and that this happens every Friday and Saturday. The front desk offered to let us move to another room but we thought that was not reasonable at 2:15 a.m. Finally at 2:30 a.m. the music stopped and all we heard for the next half hour was the noise of chairs or furniture being dragged around in the restaurant/pub above our room.

The next morning I spoke to the Hotel Guest Manager and settled our grievance by way of a free late (7 pm) checkout. We were happy with the settlement and favorably impressed with the Manager's handling of our complaint.

I'm tempted to give this hotel a 4 star rating but the noise on Friday night is likely to be a permanent problem so I'm only giving it 3 stars.

We would stay again at this hotel except we would not want anything on the 35th floor, the second top floor just under the restaurant on the top floor.

Unique Quality: This hotel is a nice, clean, modern, well-maintained building. We didn't mind the small size of the room (3508) that others at this website mentioned. We didn't mind the missing sofa bed that the hotel literature said should be included with an Ocean View Room. The spectacular view of the Pacific Ocean, the Ala Moana Park and Ala Moana Beach that we got from the balcony of the room distracted us from those concerns. We enjoyed seeing the sunset over the ocean from the balcony of our Ocean View room.

Staff were generally friendly and cheerful (except for the grouches at the Bell Desk). The lady at the Tour Desk was especially friendly and helpful.

I don't think any of the hotels in Waikiki can claim to be "quiet". There's lots of tour buses and other automobile traffic 24 hours a day in the area. This hotel is just outside of the west end of Waikiki and is not as noisy as those in Waikiki. With the balcony doors closed, it was quiet except for Friday night's noisy music. On Saturday night, we could hear the music until about 2:30 am but it was not as noisy as Fiday's. The other 5 nights of our 7 day stay were quiet with the balcony doors closed.

This hotel has an excellent location. It's adjacent to the Ala Moana Shopping mall that has everything we needed including a grocery store that has reasonable prices for bottled water. There's another larger grocery store 2 blocks away called the Don Quixote that has less expensive groceries and that's almost as nearby as the one in the basement of the mall.

Buses to almost everywhere on Oahu stop at either the hotel or the adjacent mall.