Maui on Points – Which Resort is Best?

My family visited Maui over spring break (March 2024). 
We stayed 3 nights at Hyatt Regency Maui, 1 night at Marriott Wailea Beach Resort & 4 nights at Andaz Maui. We used points and certificates for all 8 nights. Saving over $13K.

Here’s a breakdown of what paid stays would have cost at for this trip:

WHICH MAUI RESORT WAS OUR FAVORITE?

We loved all 3 resorts we stayed at, it’s incredibly hard to pick a favorite.

BEST BEACH LOCATION

• Hyatt Regency Maui is in Ka’anapali. It is beach front but the beach is not great. It’s very narrow and the water is pretty rough. The hotel doesn’t set up beach chairs/umbrellas.
• Marriott’s Wailea Beach resort is located in Wailea. It is ocean front, but it’s perched above the beach giving it the most incredible views. It’s a quick 5 minute walk on a paved path to 2 beach options. The resort does set up umbrellas/chairs but there isn’t many and they seem to get snatched up quickly. It is a swimmable beach with a good amount of waves – not too intimidating.
• Andaz Maui is also located in Wailea and it is beach front. The resort seemed to have plenty of umbrellas/chairs to set up on request – although most guests preferred the pool. In the mornings/early afternoons (before the wind picks up) the beach is very swimmable. We went snorkeling and boogie boarding.

Winner: Andaz Maui

BEST WALKABLE LOCATION

• Hyatt Regency Maui is about a 10 minute walk from Whaler’s Village. You can continue your walk all to way down to Black Rock beach. This walk is completely paved and all along the walk you are passing hotels/condos with dining options. We walked to dinner at Hula Grill and it was one of our favorite meals of the trip. A lot of excursions also leave from this area. So you could easily schedule something and walk to the meeting point.
• Marriott’s Wailea Beach is walkable to the Shops of Wailea. It’s located directly behind the Marriott is only a 5 minute walk. There are a handful of restaurants here (we tried Lineage and really enjoyed it), ice cream shop, and shopping. It also has the Island Market which is a fav of ours for a to go breakfast or lunch, Maui hats & other souvenirs.
• Andaz Maui is about a 10 – 15 minute walk to Shops of Wailea.

Winner: Hyatt Regency Maui
*This is a tough one. Marriott’s Wailea Beach is a close 2nd.

RESORT POOLS

• Hyatt Regency Maui has 1 main large pool and then you walk around the grotto area to access the kid section. The main pool in my opinion is too deep. If you just want to hang out in the pool, there aren’t a lot of areas to do this. The kid section does have a slide and very shallow play areas – looks amazing for smaller kids.
• Marriott’s Wailea Beach has 4 pools. One long rectangular one by the restaurant that leads to a smaller one with 2 connected hot tubs and amazing views. A large kids pool with an amazing water slide (2 options – 1 enclosed, 1 open – I LOVE these slides!), zero entry area, play areas, little grotto/cove areas – it’s a cool pool but seating is GONE early. But their best pool… the insanely gorgeous adult’s only infinity pool. These are the only chairs at the resort that have padding (except for the 8 more ocean front chairs in front of the pool with a view that get snatched asap).
• Andaz Maui has 5 pools, 4 of them are tiered in the same section with the bottom one being zero entry and then the next 3 being tiered infinity edge pools. They also have an adult pool tucked away behind some greenery. After the seeing the adult pool at Marriott’s Wailea Beach Resort, you’ll definitely be disappointed in this one – no view, no padded chairs.

Winner: Marriott’s Wailea Beach for the Adult & Kid’s pool.
Andaz for having so many good, anyone can use, 3 infinity pools.
*I know I cheated, I just can’t pick!

INTERIORS (LOBBY COMMON SPACE, GYM, SHOPS IN RESORT)

• I LOVE the open air lobby at Hyatt Regency Maui. This style atrium reminds me of some old school Hawaii hotels. There are shops in the lobby level and a huge open air space so you just get those breathtaking views immediately. They have tons of foliage in their lobby AND penguins!
  Shops: There’s a coffee shop, a little mini market, a casual clothing shop, a higher end resort shop and a Tory Richards shop. Probably a few more I’m missing. But lots of great stuff to check out.
  Gym: This was my son & husband’s favorite gym! It was huge and they’d go every morning.
• Marriott Wailea Beach Resort doesn’t even really have a “lobby”. It’s completely outside with covering, but just totally open. There are some chairs for hanging out.
  Shops: There is a mini market type store with some casual clothes items & a more expensive resort wear store.
  Gym: While it was a nice gym, it was quite small and got a thumbs down from my son & husband.
• Andaz Maui has a gorgeous entry way with wooden pillars and water on either side. This lobby is more of a real hotel lobby but also has incredible views. They have a sand area in the middle that is art – not play area – and they have a cute welcome sign drawn into it.
  Shops: The mini market was really nice with lots of hot options, ice cream and snack items. Their clothing stores were super high end targeted and not my vibe. They also have a mini art gallery which was cool.
  Gym: My gym goers said it was too small – they don’t love all the cardio machines, they are specifically looking for free weight/weighted type of work outs. But my son loved the “squat rack”. ha! Tweens!

Winner: Hyatt Regency Maui

ROOMS & BATHROOMS

• Hyatt Regency Maui is hard to gauge because we had 2 rooms. For the suite, I LOVED the bathroom layout with the private toilet & nice shower with 2 shower heads. For the standard room, I love how huge the rooms are and the view is unbeatable. But the bathroom is not my fav with a shower curtain (yuck!)
• Marriott Wailea Beach Resort definitely falls last. The room is comfortable but nothing special. We had a side ocean view which we were super grateful for. And the bathroom has a shower curtain and a lame hair dryer (people with thick hair will understand).
• Andaz Maui completely wowed me with the room. I’d read people thought the standard room was small but I thought it was great. The beds are super low to the ground and they were so comfortable. They also had motorized black out shades! The bathroom was large and the shower was lovely. And they had a fantastic hair dryer!

Winner: Andaz Maui

RESORT FEE AMENITIES

Luckily when you book a Hyatt on points, the resort fee is waived. If these were paid stays (and we weren’t Globalists), the resort fees would have been $45 at the Hyatt Regency Maui and $50 at the Andaz Maui.
Marriott is not so generous and does charge resort fees on point/free night certificate stays so we paid $50 for our 1 night there.
These are the amenities we used which were included by the resort fee…

• At the Hyatt Regency Maui we participated in the Lei making and Kukui bracelet making, which were included in the resort fee. And we appreciated the reusable aluminum water bottles and fresh leis at check in.
• At Marriott Wailea we were greeted at check in with POG juice, chocolates, kukui nut leis and my son also received Maui wooden hook necklace. We also received 2 mai tai drink coupons. And the fee included their game room (all games were free!) and access to the movie room. The movie room was filled with oversized bean bags and had free fresh popcorn. We spent an hour in here relaxing and loved it!
• At Andaz Maui we were greeted with beautiful fresh white flower lei and kukui nut leis. At check in we received 2 nylon bags that had reusable aluminum water bottles. As well as delicious lavender lemonade (my son LOVED it). And we were given a coupon for a free gift in their market (either chocolate covered nuts or champagne – if you know me… you know we chose champagne). We absolutely loved that the outrigger, stand up paddle board and kayak sessions in the mornin were part of the resort fee. Each outing was escorted & 30 minutes. We also had free use of the snorkel equipment and boogie boards certain times of the day.

Winner: Andaz Maui

WHICH MAUI RESORT WAS OUR FAVORITE?

IF you have the opportunity to stay at least 6 or 7 nights in Maui, I’d do a split stay between the Hyatt Regency Maui and the Andaz Maui. The locations have very different feels.

IF I could only return to 1… it would be the Andaz Maui.
Having so many beach actives included was a HUGE win for us.
We also thought the included Globalist breakfast was one of the best you’ll ever have.

Service at all 3 hotels was really fantastic.
And truthfully, you can’t go wrong. We feel so incredibly lucky to have stayed at these hotels. They are all incredible and in one of the most beautiful places – MAUI! 🙂

EARNING HYATT POINTS FOR FREE STAYS

The key to earning more Hyatt stays is to rack up Chase points and transfer them to Hyatt. Earn more than 1x point per dollar on every purchase so you can get MORE free stays! 
Secret to More Hyatt Stays
Building your Chase Portfolio
How to transfer Chase points

Full review of Andaz Maui
Full review on Hyatt Regency Maui

EARNING FREE NIGHT STAYS AT MARRIOTT

The Marriott Wailea Beach Resort is often 70K – 90K points/night. This is the perfect hotel to use a 85K Marriott free night certificate – which is what we did. With the Ritz Carlton credit card, you get one 85K free night certificate every year, after year 1. This card does have a $450 fee – but between the $300 credit for airline incidentals & the 85K free night certificate, it more than pays for itself.

But here’s the catch… you can’t just apply for a Ritz Carlton credit card.
After having the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless® Credit Card for one year, we “product changed” this card TO the Ritz Carlton card. This is a win/win. There’s no credit pull to product change. AND we signed up for the Bonvoy Boundless card AGAIN (after 24 months passed) and earned that sign up bonus again.

BOOKING AWARD FLIGHTS TO MAUI (HAWAII)

A few of my favorite ways to get great award flights to Hawaii