PO‘IPU — With hotel room renovations moving forward ahead of schedule, the golf course, clubhouse and restaurants at Grand Hyatt Kaua‘i Resort and Spa reopened this week and laid-off employees are returning to work. Doug Sears, the resort’s general manager,
PO‘IPU — With hotel room renovations moving forward ahead of schedule, the golf course, clubhouse and restaurants at Grand Hyatt Kaua‘i Resort and Spa reopened this week and laid-off employees are returning to work.
Doug Sears, the resort’s general manager, was wondering Thursday how the calendar-manufacturing companies knew so far in advance how special Dec. 16 would be.
Earlier in the week, he said his son, Douglas, asked when the opening of the Po‘ipu Bay Golf Course was going to be. When Sears replied “Thursday,” Douglas pointed to a 365-day golf calendar that featured the Po‘ipu Bay Golf Course as the featured course for Dec. 16.
With 365 golf courses to choose from, and with calendars being produced so far in advance, Sears was amazed by the odds of Thursday marking the first day of play for the golf course after being closed several months for renovations.
“We are glad to have the golfers back,” he said. “There were more than a hundred rounds played on the new course today.”
The greens on the golf course were replaced with Seashore Paspalam, “which is a faster, more consistent surface, improving the playability of the course,” said Grand Hyatt spokeswoman Diann Hartman.
“It is also salt tolerant, which is important in our location, and more environmentally friendly,” she said. “If you get a weed in it, you can put salt on it, which will kill the weed but not the grass.”
The golf course held a small blessing with an invitation-only tournament on Dec. 4, with the promise of a more festive re-opening of the Po‘ipu Bay Clubhouse, the return of Yum Cha restaurant and Po‘ipu Bay Grill.
The rhythm of the Ryukyukoku Matsuri Daiko pulled people to the entrance of Yum Cha, re-opening Thursday after several months of renovation work.
The opening also marked the re-opening of the Po‘ipu Bay Clubhouse, which did not undergo renovations, and the return of normal operating hours for the Po‘ipu Bay Golf Shop which has been working with abbreviated hours during the renovations, which started in April.
Thursday marked the first day the Golf Shop returned to its 6:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. hours, seven days a week.
Hotel room renovations are ahead of schedule, Hartman said, and part of the Shipwreck wing will be open during the holidays.
“Jan. 8 through March 31, the final building consisting of 89 rooms goes under renovation, representing 15 percent of our inventory,” she said.
“All employees who were temporarily laid off are either back or will be back to work by the end of the year,” she said. “We have hired 30 new employees and have 28 positions currently open. This gets us back up to about 900 employees.”
Hartman said, “The opening of Yum Cha has 11 staff members working. We’ve added another three to the staff and there are four or five in the kitchen staff.”
Executive Chef Larry Eells has brought back some of the favorites, and is excited about some new creations inspired by his trip to Southeast Asia this summer where he was guest chef at the Grand Hyatt Shanghai, introducing Hawaiian food to the Chinese culture.
“I was honored to share Hawai‘i’s favorite foods with the people of China this summer,” Eells said. “My travels to China, Japan and Korea allowed me to absorb the culture, customs and cuisine of each country. I have worked with the new chef de cuisine at Yum Cha, Zac Pham, to incorporate a number of traditional dishes into the new menu including donburi, or Japanese stew pots, expanded dim sum dishes and authentic condiments for added spice.”
Hartman said Yum Cha offers a blend of Asian cuisine drawing from the flavors of China, Korea, Japan and Thailand.
Visit kauai.hyatt.com for more information.
