78. Aloha, Maui! The Best Tips for Luxury Travel on Hawaii's Islands

Fresh from an unforgettable trip to Maui, I'm sharing why this Hawaiian paradise has completely stolen my heart! From luxury resorts with exclusive pool experiences to the deeper meaning of 'Aloha,' join me as I share why Hawaii's islands need to be at the top of your travel list. I'll share some of my best tips for luxury travel to Maui, including the best resort I’ve ever stayed at, and show you how your visit can support the local community while experiencing the ultimate paradise vibes.

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This episode was produced by The Podcast Teacher.

Transcript

Hello, fellow jetsetters. As you may have guessed from that greeting, I just returned from my very own luxury jetsetting experience trip to Maui. And I cannot wait to share it all with you in this episode. In the native Hawaiian language, aloha, you will probably hear it as a greeting from every person you meet on the street. It means hello. It means goodbye. It actually has a very broad meaning that encompasses love, compassion, kindness, all the goodness that we all need to hear every day. We should all wake up and tell each other aloha every single day.

But when I was there, I was there for a conference. And at the opening of the conference, they had 2 Hawaiian natives come in. 1 was carrying a huge conch shell, which if you've ever tried to blow a conch, first of all, you should try it. It's a great experience to try it on any island destination that you go to with a professional, because you don't wanna get sand or anything. Anyway, that was my squirrel moment for this podcast. So they had a Hawaiian native who blew a conch, and then in came a Hawaiian priest or chief who explained that aloha is actually a blessing from me to you. It means hello. I see you.

I see your face, and I see through your eyes into your soul. And it means hello with love from me to you. And it was truly a very special moment to get this blessing in a room where we were really full of strangers, and we were about to spend 3 days together encompassing on what I can only tell you was a beautiful journey through Maui. So aloha. I can't wait to take you on this journey with me. It really was my first experience of being in paradise. I had been to Oahu, a different island in Hawaii. I'm sorry.

I wish I could say it the way the natives do, Hawaii. And Oahu is very different city, different island. Wakiki is very cosmopolitan, but Maui is just paradise. And I had no sooner walked through the outdoor open air lobby of my hotel, which had this beautiful water feature and gardens, and I got laid. I've always wanted to say that. In to my hotel when I texted my mom who is 6 hours later, mind you. So this was probably like 9 o'clock at night her time, that said, I am in paradise. This is my favorite place in the whole world.

Now, my mom has traveled with me, and she has heard me say how much I love Budapest, which I have also said on this podcast that it is a fabulous wonderful city, one of my favorites in the world. I actually like it better than Prague, which is a somewhat controversial saying. So when my mom texted back about my statement that Maui was paradise, she said, and I quote, better than Budapest? And in my head, I was like, there's really no comparison. This is truly the best place in the world that I've ever had the pleasure of traveling to. So of course, I sent her back the emoji that was like, duh. So let me tell you why you should visit Hawaii, and why you too will think it is the best place in the world. For one thing, it is the number one aspirational destination to go to. So we always say we wanna go where everybody else wants to go.

We wanna be trendsetters. We wanna be jet setters. It's the number one aspirational destination for people in the mainland, as they say, or in the contiguous United States. So everyone should go. Plus, it's easy to travel to. Believe it or not, I know people think it is so far away. And that time change, it will get you. Do not let me lie to you and say otherwise.

But you do not have to have a passport, because it is the United States. You can get flights there from everywhere in the mainland. Some of them are non stop. I happen to connect in San Francisco, which broke up the flight time beautifully for me. I flew non stop home from Honolulu right to Austin on Hawaii Airlines. There is air freight from everywhere. Every major airline flies there, even Southwest flies there for goodness sakes. And we should definitely appreciate our own country for all the culture and beauty that it has from coast to coast.

I am so fortunate and so lucky that I can say I have been to all 50 states. And now I can say I've been to more than one island in Hawaii. Not only is it paradise with your eyes, but it is paradise with your heart and your soul because it is a beautiful local culture that we can take a part of. For example, when you are there in the part of the islands of Maui that we were on, which happens to be Lanai, which was damaged by the fires, but all the resorts are open. More about that in a minute. You can walk to the fisherman's village, which is a beautiful little outdoor mall, and you can pay $14. That's it. Just 14 US dollars.

US currency, another good reason to go there. You can pick a pearl. It's a clam actually, and you open it up and you will have what type of pearl, what type of blessing, and then you can turn that into earrings. So you could make a necklace. You could make a bracelet. I had friends that made earrings. So all of that. There's luau, which is fun, entertainment, dancing, drumming, food, fire dancers, and every single resort that we visited has its own Hawaiian cultural center that you can visit and learn about activities that you can do to experience this beautiful culture that is part of us, part of the United States.

Lots of movies and television shows have been filmed there. There's even a full on movie tour that you can do in Oahu. You can go to Kauai, which is where Jurassic Park and many of the movies in that series were filmed. Also, you can go way back to Bali Hai and West Side Story that was also actually filmed on Kauai. Each island has its own distinct personality, so you can visit different places with distinct personalities on the very same trip. For example, Molokai, which is a city that literally has no traffic lights. I mean, none at all. Versus the big islands where you have Hawaii Volcano National Park, where there are still volcanoes that you can go up and then you can see.

I mentioned Oahu being a very cosmopolitan city with lots of history. For example, the Pearl Harbor Memorial is still there. You can still see oil coming out of the USS Arizona. It's a beautiful place to be in a beautiful moment. And, of course, the island that I have just returned from, Maui, the sophisticated resort life that has been your waterfalls and sunrises and sunsets that will literally make your heart fill with a joy and a sense of awe and gratitude for life. It was truly life affirming. Now, I did get to see and stay at a few different resorts that I do want to review for you. So if you are planning to go to Maui, you should consider any one of these following resorts.

I stayed for a few days at the Hyatt. Again, these are all on the lanai. I'm saying it wrong, but I posted it correctly on my Instagram which is at jet setting with Michelle. Michelle has one l. So Hyatt there, the team and the staff were unbelievable. And it does have a beautiful overlook to the beach. So I just wanna give blessing and good words to all the people that helped my stay at the Hyatt be so wonderful. Now, I also got to stay, you know, a Marriott girl, have my bon voyage points.

I also did get to stay at the Westin. And it is the absolute most beautiful resort I've ever stayed at. And that is saying something I've been lucky and fortunate enough to stay at Four Seasons throughout the world, Ritz Carlton's, and incredible places, as I said, throughout the world. This is, bar none, my favorite resort ever. It has the most beautiful picturesque view. And more importantly for all of us, bougie jetsetters like me, the most amazing quote unquote M Club or concierge lounge that I have ever seen. It's called the lanai. Everybody in the lanai tower gets access to it.

So it's definitely worth booking in that tower. All the rooms have ocean views. So if you go during whale watching season, again, more on that in just a second, you will be able to see them from your room. You can also view the pool, which is an amazing pool experience. I'll say more about that in a second. But let's talk about this lanai, please. It has a bed in the water. It's got a pool in the lanai that is only for people staying in the lanai tower.

They call it the only resort, adult only pool. I did happen to see kids there, and they weren't nice. But it has chairs and pool beds in it, but they all face the ocean. So it's undercover, so you're out of the sun beating down on you. And you can hear the ocean and you can face the ocean. They have snacks throughout the day. So does water and a full service bar. The bar is the only thing in there that is extra.

They have towels. It's all set up. They have Wi Fi and plugs. You could literally spend a whole day in there, and just soak in the world of this amazing place. But if you wanna venture out, every day at 3 o'clock, they have a complimentary luau, which literally, I think, I mean, not just literally, definitively, has the cutest luau dancers you will ever see because they bring in little kids from the local luau hula dancing school. And they tell the story, and it's so small and intimate. I mean, I think there were 10 of us watching, because once you get there, a lot of people go to the pool, or they're out at the ocean, or they're doing their pearl making excursion, whatever it is. And so really, 3 o'clock is check-in time.

So it's only the people who are around the front desk who get to see this. It's right in the lobby. And we made an effort to get there. Now I think about maybe it was like at 11. Yeah. It was 11, which is still around the time that people are arriving. So there was only like 10 of us. And it had a father son combo, and then it had 2 lovely entertaining women who showed us the different signs with their hands and their hips.

But the 2 cutest, most adorable were I think she was 85 was the other one. And I have pictures with them that are posted on my Instagram because they warmed my heart. I wanted to pack them up and take them with me. And when I asked if I could get my picture with them, they told me that they wanted to go to the pool, and they were gonna be back at the pool on Sunday. And would I come swimming with them? And it broke my heart a little bit that I was gonna be working and not swimming with them. Then the beautiful Kaanapali Resort is about 10 minutes away from the Lanai Beach area, which is where the West and the Hyatt are. This is a locally owned resort from a local family. Kaanapali Beach is a little more secluded.

It's still a great place to go for whale watching. This resort actually closed for an entire year to house local victims from the lanai fires. It has just reopened, and it's undergone this beautiful transformation. So it is like a brand new resort that you are staying at. They claim to have Maui's best luau because they actually tell you a story through all of Polynesia. And I just love the story that they closed and supported their own local community. And I would give everything to get you to go there and help support the local Maui community. And I want to send you to that resort, the Kenapali Resort.

It's just old school Hawaii. It's traditional. Another traditional Hawaii brand that you will actually see throughout Hawaii on many of the islands is Outrigger. They even have the beautiful canoe as part of their logo. Their Hawaiian cultural center also is beautiful, and one of the things that you can do there is make your own lei. And when you check out, you receive a special lei from the outrigger. It's actually a heart stone that you can add to your lei that you can make there. And then if you bring it back every time you return, you do get another heart to add.

The day we were there, they started their beautiful transformation of their rooms and their pool experience. And I just know that that resort is going to be everything for people who want that traditional, but familiar resort experience. Now what should you do when you are there in Hawaii? So first of all, serving culture started in Oahu. Waikiki Beach is known for its famous surfing. You've seen it in CIS, Hawaii 5 o, lots of other Hawaii shows. So that's certainly something you can do. You can take surfing lessons. You could do stand up paddle boarding, if that's more your style.

But Waikiki Beach is certainly a famous place for you to go. Along that lines, there's other places for you to sight see. Pearl Harbor, as I mentioned, do a luau. They all tell a different story. And that is actually what a luau is, is it's not just a meal with a beautiful pig, which I did actually get great video of 2 local Hawaiian men taking the pig out from under the pit where it cooks over several days and bring it up to then be cut and carved to be served at the luau. They eat a lot of pork in that culture. There's whale watching. There's turtle season.

Whale watching season is from December to about April. Obviously, December, if you go, the resorts will be dressed for the festive season Hawaii style, which I think would be something amazing and familiar. But really, the best time to see the whales where they are so visible, you can see them from that beautiful lanai I talked about at the Westin. It's January February, and you don't have to pay the high festive rate. So let's go. January February. Let's go whale watching. We are on it.

You can do voluntourism. Right now, Maui needs you. The Maui fires really decimated large parts of the local economy. So you can go on a tree planting experience. You can visit a local winery and experience the local vineyards. Just by visiting, you are giving back to the local economy. So lots of volunteerism experiences. Along the lines of cool experiences while you're in Maui, every one of these hotels, fellow bougie travelers, let's do it.

With me. Have amazing local spa, Hawaiian mud baths and experiences. And I've never heard the term used before, but I'm totally stealing it because I am a pool girl. I love a great pool with a view of the ocean. And these pools, they call them pool experiences. And some of them have up to 6 in one resort. Right now, the Hyatt is redoing their entire pool experience. Some of them have a Dell only pools.

Many of them have water slides. We got to just rent a floaty and lay in the sun in a beautiful large pool and just chit chat. And of course, they all have pool bars. And so you can bring your drinks in your plastic cups in the pool with you. And of course, you must try all of the local foods. I mentioned the pork, the fried rice is just not like anything you will get in Chinese food in the mainland US. It is so yummy. I think I had pineapple fried rice like every day, and I am missing it so much.

The pineapple there was so fresh. So all in all, it is truly my favorite destination. It has everything that I love and that I know you love too. Great food, great spa, great pool, beautiful views, a wonderful ocean smell, sunrises and sunsets that fill you with gratitude and awe, and make you thankful for the joy and the life that we are able to travel to such amazing and wonderful places. And you can give back all by doing that. You can see natural wildlife like whales in their natural habitat. I mean, I cannot wait to go back. I can't wait to bring mister jet setting with Michelle with me for whale watching, and I want to help you get there as well.

I have already started on the Hawaii Convention and Visitors Bureau specialist course. I want to introduce you to all the local people and the staff and the teams at the different resorts that I've mentioned who can help make your trip even more memorable and special. And I really want to send you to this beautiful part of our country so that you can fall in love with Hawaii and Maui and Kauai and the big island and Oahu just as much as I have so that they will have a place in your heart as well. Until next time, jetsetters. Enjoy your travels.