Hale Koa Hotel

The Hale Koa Hotel, which means House of the Warrior in Hawaiian, is an Armed Forces Recreation Center (AFRC) resort hotel located on Waikiki Beach and owned by the United States Department of Defense. It sits on the southeast corner of Fort DeRussy on the western end of Waikiki in Honolulu. The hotel has more than one million guests every year, all of whom require the United States Uniformed Services Privilege and Identification Card to lodge at the hotel. Though owned by the DoD, the hotel is entirely self-sustaining, and does not receive any government funding.

Hale Koa Hotel
Entrance to the Hale Koa Hotel pictured in 2006
General information
Location	Waikiki, Honolulu, Hawaii
Coordinates	21°16′54″N 157°50′05″W
Opening	October 25, 1975
Owner	United States Department of Defense
Management	Armed Forces Recreation Centers
Technical details
Floor count	14
Other information
Number of rooms	817
Number of restaurants	2
Website
http://halekoa.com

History

The hotel was originally planned to be built on the site of Battery Randolph (now the Army Museum) in the early 1970s, but the battery proved to be too resilient to demolish. The hotel opened at Waikiki beach on October 25, 1975, with a traditional Hawaiian ceremony. A major expansion came in 1991. The hotel added a new pool, a beverage bar, and a luau garden. Later, the Maile tower was built across the lobby from the Ilima tower, bringing the total number of rooms to 818. Also constructed was an adults-only pool, a fitness center, a parking garage, and Bibas, a new café located on a porch underneath the Maile tower. The Ilima Tower was fully renovated in 2010. In 2019, the Maile Tower underwent a $40 million interior renovation awarded to Haskell,^[1] and a new ocean-side pool complex replaced the hotel's original pool.

Dining

There are several dining facilities on the hotel's beachfront property:

• Bibas Courtyard Grill
• Koko at Kalia
• Java Café
• Happy's Fast & Fresh Snack Bar
• Koa Oasis
• Warrior's Lounge (closed)
• Pool Snack Bar
• Barefoot Bar
• Sunday Champagne Brunch in the Banyan Tree Room (closed)
• Beach Cart
• Coffee Cart

Eligible guests

Because Hale Koa Hotel is an AFRC resort, it is not open to the general public. Reservations may only be made by:

• Current active duty members of the Uniformed Services of the United States.
• Current Reserve and National Guard members.
• Retired from active duty, Reserves, and National Guard with or without pay (gray area).
• Honorably discharged veterans with a service-connected disability certified by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).
• Recipients of the Medal of Honor.
• Current and retired Department of Defense (DoD) and Coast Guard (CG) civilian employees.

The Survivors' Family Program extends to family members and sponsored guests accompanying authorized users. Eligible users are defined as family members who have suffered a loss of a sponsor in the event of an active duty death regardless of the cause (combat, accident, suicide, illness, etc.) and also may be uniformed personnel.