John Wayne Slept Here: Kauai Inn With Hawaiian Airlines Roots Hits Market

The grand old inn that once hosted John Wayne is now looking to start its next chapter. The Kauai Inn, long a fixture tucked beneath Hapu Ridge near Nawiliwili Harbor in Niumalu, has hit the market. With 48 rooms spread across three acres of tropical grounds, it may seem like just another property listing.

However, there’s much interesting history here that drew us in. This place carries a name and lineage that trace directly back to Kauai’s very first hotel, established in 1890, and even to the origins of once bellwether Hawaiian Airlines.

Much of the press is now calling this “Kauai’s first hotel,” and leaving it there, which entirely misses the real story. The truth is more complicated, with the name and even the buildings moving from Rice Street to Kalapaki Beach before the Nawiliwili Kauai Inn, now for sale, carried it forward.

From Fairview to Lihue to Kauai Inn.

The story begins on Rice Street in 1890, when Hungarian immigrant Charles W. Spitz opened the Fairview Hotel. William Rice later expanded and renamed it the Lihue Hotel. Guests at that time arrived by steamship at Nawiliwili, where horse-drawn baggage wagons ferried them up the hill to the hotel’s verandas. Early ads promised “cool and pleasant rooms,” a billiard hall, and horses for excursions to Kauai’s waterfalls.

After World War II, the Rice family sold the Lihue Hotel to the Inter-Island Steam Navigation Company, well known for linking Hawaii’s ports. In 1948, Inter-Island renovated the Rice Street property and renamed it the Kauai Inn. This was the same company that had launched Inter-Island Airways in 1929, which became Hawaiian Airlines in 1941. The Rice Street location eventually gave way, and today Kalapaki Villas condominiums sit on the original site. As we always say, Hawaii is a small place, and this story proves it as well as anything.

From Rice Street to Kalapaki Beach.

By the early 1960s, Inter-Island decided visitors wanted to be on the beach, not up on Rice Street. They cut the old Kauai Inn’s buildings in half, hauled them downhill, and reassembled them at Kalapaki Beach as part of the new Kauai Surf Hotel. That property later became the Kauai Marriott, and is now the Royal Sonesta.

How the name Kauai Inn came to be associated with Niumalu.

When Inter-Island shifted its attention to the Kauai Surf, the Kauai Inn name eventually fell out of use on Rice Street. A separate inn at Niumalu (near Nawiliwili) adopted the name in the years that followed. While it was not the same structure or location as the old Rice Street hotel, it carried forward the Kauai Inn identity that began in 1890.

Hollywood checks in.

The Nawiliwili Kauai Inn’s claim to fame came in 1962, when John Wayne checked into Room 301 during the filming of “Donovan’s Reef.” The cast and crew stayed here too, turning the low-key inn into a Hollywood hangout for a summer. Locals still talk about it, and the story has stuck longer than the movie itself.

Wayne’s presence is still part of the lore and draw, and it is why “John Wayne Slept Here” remains the inn’s enduring claim to fame.

Steamships, airlines, and a surprising link to Hawaiian Airlines.

When Inter-Island Steam Navigation bought the Rice Street hotel in 1948 and rebranded it, they were the same company that had launched Inter-Island Airways in 1929. Those first little Sikorsky seaplanes evolved into Hawaiian Airlines in 1941. While Inter-Island did not build the current Nawiliwili Kauai Inn, it carried forward the Kauai Inn identity that the airline’s parent company had helped establish.

Today’s sale of Kauai Inn.

Now, after decades of family ownership, the 48-room Kauai Inn at Niumalu/Nawiliwili is again listed for sale at around $26 million. Real estate professionals frame it as an opportunity to steward a “living piece of Kauai’s story.” Whether the future brings careful restoration or a more modern redevelopment, the name, Kauai Inn, represents more than 130 years of shifting tourism history on the Garden Island.

What’s next for Kauai Inn?

From the Fairview Hotel on Rice Street to the Kauai Inn name carried over to Nawiliwili, this story has been one of reinvention. Sugar gave way to jet travel, steamships gave way to Hawaiian Airlines, and John Wayne once strolled the hallways. Now the inn is up for sale, and yet another chapter is about to be written.

Will someone keep its history alive, or will it slip onto the long list of Hawaii hotels remembered only in old ads and fading photos?