Royal Kona Resort

Historic oceanfront resort walking distance to downtown Kona. Beautiful setting, friendly staff, nice bar and cafe.

We loved the room - we had a corner room with an ocean view on the 3rd floor and it had a wraparound balcony and slider doors on both sides. Room was spacious and the bed was quite comfortable. We had the slider doors open at night so we could hear the ocean and could see whales from our balcony (bring binoculars!). Sitting at the open air restaurant downstairs with the waves crashing on the lava rock below us and watching the sunset was amazing. They told us that street parking is available for free but we opted to pay for parking in their lot and were glad we did, since we almost never saw an open street spot.

The hotel rooms are under renovations and they are very much needed. The grounds are nice. At check in you get a free Mai Tai but it was unusuable because the bar was so full they were not seating & you could not take drinks back to your room. It would have been great to just sit on our balcony, sipping mai tais, & listening to the waves & music. The beds sagged; not a good night sleep. It was in a good location to the Kona touristy strip. It was great to be able to check out pool towels to take to our manta ray snorkel. Overall, we would probably come back.