Kauai Condo?
 

We have the opportunity to stay at Marriott's Waiohai Beach Club for 5 nights for 2 adults one child at $798 total. It includes a rental car, $50 Marriott Resort Gift Certificate, and a two bedroom w/kitchen villa. I had heard that Condos are pretty reasonable too. Anyone have any suggestions on if we should take this offer or shop around?

That's a brand new property on a nice beach in a good area for families. At that price I'd say it was a decent deal, especially as it includes the car. The "villa" is, if I remember right, just a unit in a multi-unit building i.e. it is not a separate free-standing unit, just marketing-speak.

A condo might give more space for similar costs, some include a car too, we used Suite Paradise last year with good results (www.suite-paradise.com).

Good hunting, the Poipu area is great for families.

That sounds like a great deal to me. Just be sure to get all the details. It sounds like you may have to sit through a time-share presentation if it's a Marriot Club offer. They tend to hide that in the small print.

Make sure you get written confirmations if you do this. We were offered a similar deal; the guy said they'd e-mail the confirmations in a fwe days. Well, I waited and waited, and the confirmation never came. I kept calling all sorts of people at Marriott, and the answer was that they had lost our reservations and now our particular dates were not available.

I talked to the higher-ups at Marriott for about a week, but no one was able to re-do our reservation. So we're staying at the Marriott Beach Club in Lihue.

Hope you have better results.

Thanks for the feedback! There is no sales presentation that is required which suprised me. I checked out the Suite Paradise site. Very nice! Are they as close to the beach as the Marriote? Was it a problem only having fans (rather than A/C)?

I went to the Waiahai Beach Club on a similar offer last April. Same specs but $595. It did require a "tour" but that was not as bad as I expected. No pressure.

Property is ok and the rooms are nice. A large room with private bath, living area with pull-out sofa, and another room that has a bathroom with two entries. Good size kitchen.

Pool areas can get congested, have to go through them to get to the beach. Restaurant now open on premises, I believe.

For the price it is a great value. But I would not pay retail rates to rent. We are returning to the Kiahuna Plantation in July, my personal favorite.

Doug

We did a similar deal a couple years ago ($600 then) at the Marriott in Lihue, where they pitched us on a time-share for Waiohai. For the value you're getting, you won't find a better price. But, be aware!

You will be asked, but not required, to sit through the presentation. Since it was raining, and they kicked in another $50 gift certificate as inducement, we did. Bad decision. I knew I was in trouble when my wife and the sales person started sharing pictures of kids. After three hours of sweating bullets and saying NO, I finally got her out of there.