Hilton Hawaiian Village

Great Place To Travel to and Stay For People Who Love Peace and Serenity

The Hilton Hawaiian Village Beach Resort and Spa, formerly the Kaiser Hawaiian Village Hotel, is a popular hotel in the Waikiki area of the City and County of Honolulu, Hawaii, United States since 1957.

Located on the Hawaiian island of O'ahu and near Ala Moana Center, the largest open air shopping center in the world, the Hawaiian Village Hotel sits on over 22 acres (8.9 ha) of beachfront property and features the largest swimming pool in Waikiki, over twenty-two restaurants, exotic wildlife, and botanical gardens as well as a branch of the Bishop Museum.

The Village was conceived, constructed and first administered by Henry J. Kaiser, the industrialist who built the Hoover Dam and Grand Coulee Dam and founder of Kaiser Permanente, the health system that bears his name.

The Hilton Hawaiian Village is the largest hotel of the Hilton chain with 3,386 rooms and with 7 towers and is also the 14th largest hotel in the world.

Village Plan

In building the Hawaiian Village Hotel, Kaiser developed the "village plan" for his resort. In the village plan, various sections of the development were designed in specific types of motifs indicative of the culture of the hotel's surroundings. Kaiser's village plan is now used in various layouts of hotels and resorts throughout the world. The various villages in the present-day Hilton Hawaiian Village Beach Resort and Spa surround centerpiece towers: Diamond Head Tower, Ali'i Tower, Tapa Tower, Rainbow Tower, Lagoon Tower, Kalia Tower and Grand Waikikian. The newest tower is the Grand Waikikian opened to the public (December 28, 2008)

Wildlife

The Village Hotel is home to a group of South African black-footed penguins that live in an outdoor habitat surrounded by greenery and a small pond filled with several types of turtles (box and soft-shelled). Other animals that live on the grounds include several types of ducks, lesser flamingos, sacred ibis, black-crowned night herons, koi fish, chameleons, macaws, and parakeets.

The Geodesic Dome

The Village had been the site one of the earlier geodesic domes constructed in the United States.

Wanting an auditorium at the Honolulu village, Henry Kaiser acquired the license to produce geodesic domes following the design work of Buckminster Fuller. The aluminium-skinned dome with a 145 ft (44 m)-wide span, was manufactured at the company's plant in Oakland, California and shipped to Hawaii. When Kaiser understood that the materials had arrived in Hawaii, he flew from San Francisco to follow the construction — only to discover the building was already complete, having been constructed in only 22 hours.^[1] The dome was razed in 1999. - Adapted for Wikipedia.com