Hawaii -- Mega-Resorts Create Some Fantasy Islands

From Oahu to Maui, from Kauai to the Big Island of Hawaii, new super resorts run by chains such as Hyatt Hotels Hawaii and Westin Hotels & Resorts are changing the face of the Hawaiian islands forever.

The era of the mega-resorts - virtually self-contained mini-holiday cities with their own transportation systems - is fast becoming an aloha-styled vacation trend for the 1990s.

From sunrise to sunset, mega-resorts in exotic settings such as the $360-million Hyatt Regency Waikoloa combine fantasy vacations in exotic settings.

They offer a 'round-the-clock whirl of sports, shopping, ethnic restaurants, water playgrounds, art treasures, colorful birds, lush tropical gardens, crammed daytime programs and lots of nightlife.

Indeed, at Waikola on the Big Island one can helicopter to a picnic; go on a llama trek; participate in a rodeo; travel to accommodations by space-age trams or gondolas; choose from 1,241 rooms spread out over 62 acres; sample enough restaurants to spend a week without eating dinner in the same place; and snorkel in a seven-acre lagoon carved from a desert of jagged lava.

And chances are you ain't seen nothing yet because Hyatt has two more Hawaiian mega-resorts under construction on Maui's Wailea sun coast (Wailea is called ``Wimbledon West'' with its grass tennis court complex, not to mention Robert Trent Jones golf courses) and the Hyatt Regency Kauai.

The $160-million Hyatt Kaui is set for a fall 1990 opening while the new $400 million Grand Hyatt Maui property bows in next September.

It is modestly described as ``the most extravagantly built resort the world has ever seen'' with a lavish spa and a series of river pools, locks and slides leading up to a deluxe

pool modeled on the one at Hearst Castle in California.

Hyatt is committing nearly $3 billion to new resorts worldwide in the next five years.

``The word resort once described a small, seasonally operated ma-and-pa operation geared to individual vacationers,''said Hyatt president Darryl Hartley-Leonard.

``Today's resort is an expensive, luxury, virtually self-contained vacation destination in itself, with a multitude of amenities, art from around the world, extensively landscaped gardens, water playgrounds and unique architecture. They fulfill the need for fantasy and escape.''

The idea behind the mega-resort is to cash in on the trend toward frequent, short-term fantasy vacations with virtually everything one wants contained in a single property.

A Cornell Hotel School grad named Chris Hemmetter is the man who made the mega-resort an idea whose time has come with the accent on fantasy, food and exotica.

Hemmetter made his first real splash in 1976 with the $150-million Hyatt Regency Waikiki, then the largest single construction project in Hawaii's history.

In 1980, he topped that with the Hyatt Regency Maui and his first great water playground complete with streams, waterfalls, a huge water slide, grotto bar, exotic birds flying in Japanese and tropical gardens and a tree-draped lobby filled with Asian and Pacific art treasures spilling over into open areas.

The water playground idea soon spread to other Hyatt properties, from the Hyatt Scottsdale in the Arizona desert to the Hyatt Regency Cerromar in Puerto Rico, to the latest Caribbean Hyatt, in Aruba.

But it is mainly in Hawaii that Hemmetter made his aquatic mark.

Over the past decade in Hawaii alone, Hemmetter opened the $300-million Westin Maui on Kaanapali Beach, the $350-million Westin Kauai at Kauai Lagoons and, most recently, the Hyatt Regency Waikoloa.