Pros: View is spectacular. Host is well equipped with a lot of the things we needed. There is coffee, plenty of toilet paper, kitchen towels, beach stuff, enough water pressure, etc. Host is very attentive and responsive. Location is great. It is at walking distance of restaurants and beach and the traffic is not crazy like in the middle of Waikiki. Parking spot is a great advantage as well. There is an ABC store (like store 24) right on the corner and ABC stores every other block
Cons: The elevator. The elevator is very slow. There was only one working while we were there and it takes from 5 to 20 min. The elevator broke 3 days during our stay. 2 of the days were one hour or so. One day was a full day. Host refunded us 2 of the days that the elevator broke and he was very sorry. It seems that elevators break all the time and they need to be totally replaced and I understand this is the building, not the host problem, but it is a big issue. We were on the 35th floor and climbing the stairs up and down after a hike carrying back packs was not pleasant. There was a guy with two 50 # suitcases going down the stairs from one of the upper floors and he was not happy.
I thought about relocating the day the elevator broke for the full day and the host gladly offered to refund me the rest of the nights but the refund is only 70%. It doesn’t include the Airbnb and service fees so it didn’t make sense to me to move at that point.
Also, there was a small cockroach walking around the floor one night . No worries, I killed it and the host said he will do a deep cleaning after I am gone. I understand the weather is always warm and there are more bugs but it needs to be deeply cleaned constantly to avoid these issues.
There is nobody in the lobby to check-in or out. The last day when I went down using the elevator (it worked! phew) around 4am to take an uber to the airport, there was a homeless person going up, not sure why or where. Somebody might have let her in the lobby door, which is concerning.
Other than that, Hawaii is an amazing place to visit and the view from the windows (that you can open by the way) is fantastic.