Princess Trumps Kings On “Royal” Guest List

By David Ellis

Retired British Army Major Douglas King and his wife would hardly have realised that a holiday in Hawaii back in 1927 would write them into history.

Because after their travel agent booked them into Honolulu's new Royal Hawaiian Hotel, they arrived to find they were in fact the first civilian guests at the palatial hotel right on the sands of Waikiki beach.

And as he signed the Guest Register, Major King was delighted to point out to his wife that the only other guest - and the first-ever to book into the hotel just hours before them - was Hawaii's Princess Abigail Kawananakoa.

The Kings had prepared themselves well for the rigours of holidaying in the tropics: they'd booked two beach-view suites for themselves, a room for her maid, another for his butler, and a third for their assortment of steamer trunks, suitcases, hat boxes and tennis racquets.

The Kings quickly became friends with the Princess who fortuitously appreciated their ex-military status, and the three shared walks on the beach, tennis - and joining General Manager, Mr Arthur Benaglia as he welcomed other newly-arriving guests to the hotel with cocktails.

And they had little for complaint when it came to service: no fewer than 300 staff were on hand to attend their every need.

But by the time Major and Mrs King checked-out some weeks later, the Royal Hawaiian was full of equally well-heeled guests, a point highlighted by photographs of the time showing guest's lackeys directing the unloading of their employer's trunks from the steamers they'd sailed in from America's West Coast, and in many cases their Rolls-Royces as well.

But getting The Royal Hawaiian built and opened had not been all plain-sailing for its owners, the Matson Navigation Company and its sister Matson & Territorial Hotel Company.

The companies had chosen a one-time coconut grove on Waikiki for their hotel, and poured a-then fortune of US$4m into building a 6-storey super-luxury hotel in a Spanish-Moorish style that was all the rage at the time, thanks largely to screen idol Rudolph Valentino's celluloid exploits.

The site had also been something of a playground of King Kamehameha I after he'd conquered the island of Oahu, and later Queen Kaahumanu built a small summer palace there.

But no one had mentioned to the Matson companies that the old coconut grove also had the drawback of becoming something of a bog in heavy rain. And soon after construction started, the hotel took on a very unhealthy Pisa-like lean.

Hundreds of tonnes of concrete were poured under the foundations and the place jacked-back to the vertical, while an elaborate system of drains was dug to divert water around it.

The opening of the hotel was timed to coincide with the maiden voyage of Matson's newest ship, the Malolo and invitations were sent to all the right politicians, business moguls and socialites to sail on her to Honolulu to participate in an official Hotel Opening Dinner.

Unfortunately the ship didn't get to Honolulu until seven months later - after banging into a freighter during trials she had to go back into dock for repairs; the passengers were put on other liners, and in early February 1927 just after Princess Kawananakoa and the Kings booked into the hotel, 1200 people attended a US$10-a-plate black-tie affair to officially mark the opening of The Royal Hawaiian.

The hotel had been painted pink, which had a quirky popularity at the time, and quickly earned itself the nickname The Pink Palace. Business boomed until the stock-market crash of 1929 when visitor numbers to Hawaii dropped almost overnight from over 22,000 a year to just 10,000; it took until the mid-1930s to recover - and then during WWII the hotel was taken over as an armed services' R&R centre.

In 1969 a new 17-storey tower-wing was built, but the original little pink core of The Royal Hawaiian remains to this day. Regular guests still include Presidents and other heads of state, tycoons, musicians and film stars.

The latter included Shirley Temple who often stayed there as a child star. Staff at the hotel's Mai Tai bare created the non-alcoholic Shirley Temple Cocktail for her so she could "drink with the grown ups" - and of course get the hotel some nice free publicity in the papers.