White Moorish towers rising from Wailea's southern shoreline cut an unmistakable silhouette against Maui's volcanic horizon — an architectural choice that has always divided opinion but has equally always been impossible to forget. Fairmont Kea Lani, which opened in 1991 and was designed with a Mediterranean-inspired vocabulary unusual for Hawaii, spreads across roughly 22 acres of oceanfront land in a low-rise arrangement of arched arcades, domed rotundas, and stucco facades that draw more from Andalusia than from Polynesia. The 413 keys — all suites and villas — give the property an unusual generosity of scale for a Hawaiian resort, each accommodation configured with a separate living area and a private lanai oriented toward the channel between Maui and Kaho'olawe. A recent interiors refresh brought the guestrooms considerably closer to the landscape they frame, replacing earlier tropical maximalism with a quieter material story: woven headboard panels in textured dark fiber, cane-fronted nightstands with brass detailing, marble-topped millwork in warm walnut tones, and indigo-striped wool rugs grounding the pale limestone tile floors. The dining spaces move in a different register — the poolside restaurant shown here deploys laser-cut black metal chairs, layered curved ceiling planes in warm timber, and sheer fringe pendants that dissolve the boundary between interior and terrace. The freeform pool complex, with its connected lagoon pools, whitewater slide, and canvas-shaded cabanas set within dense tropical planting, anchors the middle ground between building and sea.

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