Lanai is 364 square kilometres, has around 3,000 residents, one town, no traffic lights, and about thirty miles of paved road. It also has two hotels. Not two worth writing about. Two.
The reason is ownership. Ninety-eight percent of the island belongs to a single person, who bought it in 2012, and before that it belonged to a pineapple company that owned it outright for most of the twentieth century. Lanai has never been subdivided, never had a coastal development boom, and has no mechanism by which a third hotel could appear unless the owner decided to build one.
What a capped island actually feels like
The practical effect is not scarcity in the sense of things being hard to get. It is emptiness.
Hulopoe Bay, the main beach, is a marine preserve with spinner dolphins in it most mornings and rarely more than a few dozen people on the sand. The Munro Trail crosses the island's spine through Cook pines planted in the 1910s. Keahiakawelo, the Garden of the Gods, is a field of red rock formations that looks like Mars and where you will usually be alone. Shipwreck Beach on the north shore has a rusting hull on the reef and nobody at all.
There is no crowd anywhere on Lanai because there is nowhere for a crowd to stay.
The trade is that there is also very little to do commercially. Lanai City has a handful of restaurants around a square of pines. That is the extent of it. If you want a town, this is the wrong island.
The two hotels
Both are operated by the same company, at opposite ends of the island and at opposite ends of what a hotel can be.
Four Seasons Resort Lanai sits above Hulopoe Bay on the south coast, low and open to the trade winds, with the beach below it and a golf course cut into the cliffs at Manele. The rooms face the water, the service is the best in Hawaii, and the pools look out over the bay. This is the one to book if the sea is why you are coming.
Four Seasons Resort Lanai
Manele, Hulopoe Bay · 5★ · $$$$
Above a marine preserve with dolphins in it most mornings
Check availabilitySensei Lanai, A Four Seasons Resort occupies the former plantation lodge up at Koele, 500 metres above the coast among the pines, and it is now an adults-only wellness property built around a structured programme rather than a spa menu. It is cool, misty and completely unlike the beach resort twenty minutes downhill. Guests can use both properties.
Sensei Lanai, A Four Seasons Resort
Koele uplands · 5★ · $$$$
Adults-only wellness lodge 500 metres above the coast
Check availabilityWhat we have left off
Everything else on the island, because there is nothing else. Hotel Lanai in town is an eleven-room plantation building and there are a small number of vacation rentals. Neither is a four or five star hotel, which is the standard this guide applies everywhere.
That is the whole inventory of a Hawaiian island.
What to do
Snorkel Hulopoe Bay in the morning, when the spinner dolphins are usually in it. The tide pools at the eastern end are the best in Hawaii.
Drive the Munro Trail in a four-wheel drive, which crosses the island's ridge and on a clear day shows you five other Hawaiian islands at once. It is rough and it is the best thing here.
Go to Keahiakawelo at sunset for the rock formations, and to Shipwreck Beach on the north coast, where the road runs out.
Eat in Lanai City around Dole Park, and walk it, because the plantation town is genuinely preserved rather than restored.
Play Manele if you play golf. The twelfth hole crosses a stretch of open ocean.
Practical notes
Lanai is reached by a 30-minute ferry from Lahaina on Maui, or by a short flight from Honolulu or Kahului into Lanai City's small airport. Note that ferry services from Lahaina have been affected since the 2023 Maui wildfire; check the current schedule and departure point before planning around it.
Both hotels run their own shuttles, which is fortunate because there is no public transport and taxis are minimal. A four-wheel drive is the only way to see the interior and both properties can arrange one.
The weather is dependable: warm and dry on the coast, ten degrees cooler and often misty up at Koele. There is no season to avoid.
Explore 4 & 5 Star Lanai Hotels
Questions people actually ask
Are there really only two hotels?
Yes. Ninety-eight percent of the island is under single ownership and there is no third property at this standard.
Is there anything to do?
Snorkelling, the interior by four-wheel drive, two golf courses and a preserved plantation town. There is no nightlife and very little commerce. That is the appeal or it is not.
How long do you need?
Three nights. Longer if the point is doing nothing, which for many guests it is.
Can you visit as a day trip from Maui?
You can, by ferry, and it gives you Hulopoe Bay and Lanai City. The interior needs a vehicle and most of a day.