My Wife and I recently were scheduled to stay at the Aloha Guest House for four days. We left after the first night. The problem was not the host, but cramped rooms and general lack of privacy. The house was not intended to be a bed and breakfast originally and was later retrofit which leads to the problem. What I might call 5 decent size rooms were each turned into 5 cramped rooms with bathrooms crammed into them. In some cases, the toilet will be in one area and the shower (or tub if it fit) would be elsewhere.
It would have better suited the host to have 4 guest rooms rather than being greedy and trying to cram in 5 rooms for the extra money. In addition to the cramped quarters was a general lack of privacy. The doors and walls were very thin leading to almost any conversation being public to those on the other side. Each room connects to the lanai with very small curtains being the only barrier between you and everyone else. The bathroom in the room we were in had no visible way to block the window which was at eye level to the linai and gave a perfect view inside the bathroom.
The condition of the road in correspondence was severely underrated. Even with a 4-wheel drive vehicle, it's a good 8-10 minutes to make the mile trip up the road from the main highway. Additionaly, make sure you don't arrive after dark as you'd probably never find your way up the road. Add this to the 30 minutes to the Kona area makes it 90 minutes round trip each day to/from the popular areas.
We asked for half of our money back allowing for an extra nights rent even though we were leaving and were told sorry, no refunds. This might make more sense if there hadn't have been two empty rooms in the house. It's not like our reservation prevented someone from staying here. The host told us that it was a bed and breakfast, not a cottage so privacy and cramped spaces are usual. That's a crock. I'll refer them to the Island Goode's were we stayed in Hilo earlier this trip and the Rocky Mountain Lodge in Cascade, Colorado for two references.
With all that said, there are some positives here in case what is mentioned doesn't bother you. The host was generally nice and breakfast was delicious. The views from the bedrooms over the ocean were magnificent, however, no curtains exist so if you don't like lights when your sleeping, you won't make it past sunrise. There is a suite on the backside of the house (not the ocean views from the room). If you can land this and don't mind the road, this might be worth it.
The place just wasn't right for us and we had a great time at the Sheraton Keahou Bay Resort and reccomend this. It was worth it so that we could actually enjoy our vacation.
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