Finding health and ogling wealth at the Four Seasons Sensei Lanai.
Each of Hawaii’s six main islands has a nickname, or at least a quasi-official alias, that makes it recognizable to us mainlanders. The island of Hawaii itself is famously nicknamed the Big Island. Verdant, forested Kauai is the Garden Isle. Though its traditional nickname is the Friendly Island, hermit-like Molokai is probably better known as the “leper colony one.” And so on.
And Lanai? It’s the Oracle Guy Island. Or at least it has been since 2012, when billionaire tech tycoon Larry Ellison purchased the 140-square-mile tropical paradise part and parcel from another billionaire for the seemingly bargain-basement price of $300 million.
The deal left Ellison with plenty of capital for upgrades – including one “improvement” that I’m vibing on big-time shortly after checking into Four Seasons Sensei Lanai (fourseasons.com/sensei), the island’s gratuitously gorgeous wellness resort.
“It’s called an onsen garden,” a Sensei representative tells me, as we explore a warren of private mineral-water baths, known in Japan as onsen, set in the jungle surrounding the property. Connected by prim footpaths, the onsen are basically high-end hot tubs, each ingeniously hidden from prying eyes by lush sweeps of monstera, orchids and other tropical flora. Utterly private, mystical and serene.
I cannot wait to have a post-hike soak in one of them.
In addition to yoga and sound baths and Nobu sushi feasts, hiking is prominently on the menu at Sensei, which eschews many of the expected island-resort trappings (beach chairs, luaus, etc.) for a more insular, nature-driven experience. Five short years after its unveiling, the resort surely ranks as one of the world’s most desirable getaways for fans of solitude and salubrious pampering.
“I’ll tell you a secret – I start every morning with an onsen session,” the rep confesses. “There’s nothing like watching the sun come up when you’re in the water. Highly recommended!”
It will turn out to be one of many things that sets Oracle Guy Island apart from its siblings in the Hawaiian archipelago.
The Dole Years
How and why Lanai became a tourism destination is a fascinating, century-long saga unto itself – a story involving pineapples, latter-day feudalism and feral housecats.
Set 10 miles off the west coast of Maui, the apostrophe-shaped island was virtually uninhabited when British explorers first surveyed the archipelago in the late 1700s, possibly due to persistent native suspicions that it was haunted by goblin-like creatures known as akua-ino. By 1854, it was populated chiefly by Mormon settlers, then by Japanese laborers contracted to work Lanai’s small smattering of sugar plantations, then by feral house cats brought in to control rats (see sidebar). In the early 20th century, the entire island was consolidated into one large fief through a series of semi-shady land deals and sold off to canned-food pioneer James Dole of the Dole Food Company, who promptly converted Lanai into the world’s largest dedicated pineapple farm.
The island remained in that posture for the next 70 years, churning out untold megatons of spiky tropical fruit until the early 1990s, when growers in Costa Rica and the Philippines undercut their Hawaiian competitors, forcing Dole to suspend pineapple operations.
Admirably, Dole parent company Castle & Cooke attempted to pound its agricultural swords into hospitality ploughshares in the aftermath, building a pair of resorts on Lanai to stimulate tourism. The larger, oceanfront resort ultimately became the Four Seasons Resort Lanai. The other, more secluded property was tucked into the pristine Cook pine forest of Lanai’s mountainous inland and christened The Lodge at Koele.
Despite favorable reviews and complimentary Dole Whips for guests, Castle & Cooke’s two-decade foray into hospitality ultimately proved unfruitful, and eventually Ellison swooped in with his $300 million. The deal included 98 percent of Lanai’s total real estate (the remainder is state land and privately owned homes) including all assets and structures therein – including the two resorts.
In essence if not fact, the deal also included Lanai’s roughly 3,300 residents, most descended from the plantation laborers who cleared Dole’s pineapple trees for three generations, and most of whom are now dependent on tourism for their livelihoods. Overnight, Ellison became their benefactor, and when he closed both resorts to embark on a multi-year, $525 million renovation project – a dollar figure well in excess of Lanai’s actual price tag, it should be noted – they stayed on his payroll.
“It was a pretty amazing undertaking,” the resort rep tells me. “Many of the residents were retrained, re-tasked, and contributed [to the renovation]. It is a lot like a big family.”
The beachy Four Seasons resort was reopened in 2016. Its sister location in the pine forest followed suit in 2019, with a more thorough and fundamental rebranding: the Four Seasons Sensei Lanai. Complete with the onsen garden and hiking options aplenty.
The Resort
What does it take to launch a Hawaiian hospitality empire, almost from scratch? Well, an airline helps. One of the issues that bedeviled the previous hospitality regime on Lanai was its irregular partnership with the commercial carriers needed to fly tourists to the island from the larger Hawaiian airports.
Ellison engineered an air-quotes simple workaround: He launched his own regional airline. From the U.S. mainland, Lanai visitors fly into Honolulu on a traditional carrier, then chill in a Lanai Air (lanaiair.com) guest terminal for a few minutes, refreshing themselves with macadamia cookies and coconut water, before boarding a twin-prop puddle jumper for the scenic 30-minute flight to the island.
Easy, squeezy. When you book a stay at Sensei, the cost of the Lanai Air leg is even bundled into your room fee (starting at $900/night).
From the tiny Lanai airfield, it’s a short, pleasant ride to Sensei in a resort SUV, through the island’s lone populated settlement, Lanai City, and past sweeping, windward flats that more closely resemble the plains of the Midwest than, say, the jungles of Kauai.
That changes, instantly and breathtakingly, when you pull up to Sensei and its plantation-style main lodge. Stepping past a pair of friendly tabbies lounging on the wide front patio (“Our welcome crew,” a valet says), you admire the cathedral of palms, pines and exotic flora that embraces the property, which is set in an elevated foothill region known as Koele.
Inside the main lobby, the stunning visuals continue – though these are artistic, not botanical, in nature. Ellison is a well-known collector of modern art, and seemingly keeps the cream of his collection in full view of Sensei guests. The sleek, mercurial figures of Jeff Koons. The distinctively bulbous bodyworks of Fernando Botero. The post-modern canvases of Jane Puylagarde. It’s a dazzling display of patronage, and even the Sensei staff seems in awe of it.
“It’s kind of fun to come to work in the morning and see what [Ellison] has shipped over to us,” one of them tells me, alluding to the boss’s fondness for crating up his latest acquisitions and shipping them to the resort, unannounced.
The show continues in the park-like outdoor kingdom behind the lodge, where Sensei’s “sculpture garden” culminates in one truly show-stopping statement piece: a 30-foot human head fashioned from polyester and marble dust by Spanish sculptor Jaume Plensa. Named “Talaia,” the lovely feminine face seems to hover, sleeping, over the property from its vantage in the jungle, like some retro-futuristic overlord from a 1970s science fiction movie. It’s kooky and I dig it.
You could spend a week strolling Sensei’s 24 pikake-scented acres and never ogle the same Marc Quinn bronze or 10-foot bird of paradise twice, but several features help orient the visitor, including a magnificent complex of interconnected swimming pools and a tranquil koi pond that’s really more like a koi lake. And abutting that lake: the resort’s lone restaurant, Sensei Nobu, encased in an all-glass dining room seemingly suspended over the water.
Needless to say: When your daily-driver restaurant is a Nobu, you’ve chosen your resort well. The truth of it dawns on me the morning after arrival, as I enjoy a breakfast of flawlessly broiled king salmon alongside warming miso soup and a sweet, colorful retinue of pickled carrots and daikon. Apologies to Waffle House, but this beats bacon and eggs any day.
Hiking and Co.
Nine-figure art collection and next-level Japanese cuisine notwithstanding, Sensei is first and foremost a wellness resort – and the opportunities for centering, purging and otherwise renewing are seemingly endless.
Conceived by Ellison in collaboration with Dr. David Agus, a well-known author and celebrity health guru, the wellness program at Sensei is based on a tripartite philosophy of “move, nourish, rest” – i.e. exercise, food and downtime. There are daily meditation sessions, forest bathing clinics, sleep seminars and more, almost all of it complimentary, but also with optional one-on-one, therapist-driven regimes.
Most impressive among the wellness facilities: a colony of hale, or private spa cottages, where massages, facials and other services are conducted. Each hale includes an outdoor shower, private plunge pool and infrared sauna, along with other wellness diversions. At the conclusion of my 90-minute hale sabbatical, a therapist rings a bell to politely alert me that my time is up, and it’s the saddest moment of my Sensei visit. Every day should be a hale day.
In partnership with its oceanfront sibling, Sensei also offers golf, scuba and other resort-y diversions, but the jewel of its excursion program is undoubtedly the hiking. I offer two rationales: One, hiking is a wonderful hybrid of fitness and nature, and everyone should do it, and two, it’s the best way to see and explore Lanai’s lush, leeward east coast, where the furrowed canyons and dense tree growth offer an approximation of Kauai’s fabled Napali Coast.
Three hiking trails snake out of Sensei into the wilderness, each past stands of stately Cook pines, a tree breed so bizarrely symmetrical, they almost look fake. You can hike alone or led by seasoned Sensei hiking guides. Our first hike: the 5.3-mile Kaiholena Trail loop, a firm meander through the Koele weald that takes us to a promontory called Koloiki Ridge, where we gaze down on the island’s east coast and get nice eyefuls of Maui and Molokai while noshing on a mid-hike bento box lunch.
The next morning, a similar, 4.5-mile hike takes us through former pineapple fields, while our guide describes re-foresting efforts and points out unearthed campfire charcoal left behind by the island’s earliest native inhabitants. The hike culminates at Keahiakawelo – a legendary rock garden with sweeping views.
Back at the resort, our guide tells us to leave our hiking shoes on the porch and gives us slippers for the march back to our rooms. Later that day, my shoes magically reappear in my guest room, fussily laundered, without a mote of dust or dirt. It’s a level of hiker pampering I’ve never experienced before.
To hell with it. I slip on some swim trunks and make my way to the onsen garden, lowering my sore quads (and the rest of me) into the steaming water, while a small waddling of ducks frits about in the nearby foliage.
It isn’t dawn yet. But the onsen couldn’t be better.
Sensei Hiking: Palm Springs
For a Sensei hiking experience that hits closer to your Arizona home, check out Lanai’s sister property, Sensei Porcupine Creek, located in the Coachella Valley desert. Winter is the high season for the resort’s hiking program, including a resort-organized retreat this month (January 16-20).
3 Lanai Highlights
There’s a whole island beyond the manicured gardens of Sensei, if you choose to explore it.
1. Lanai Cat Sanctuary
Once the pineapples left, the rats did, too, forcing the island’s feral cats to feast on native flightless birds called ua’u. Animal activist Kathy Carroll took action, founding this 25,000-square-foot sanctuary where 600 cats are fed, protected and snuggled by tourists. lanaicatsanctuary.org
2. Hulopoe Beach
Located near the Four Seasons Resort Lanai, this is the island’s top public beach, with excellent snorkeling and abundant pelagic sea life. Complimentary hourly shuttles from Sensei available. gohawaii.com
3. Hale Keaka Lanai Theater
High-back stadium seating, spotless lobby, THX sound… Lanai City’s lone movie theater seems pretty luxurious given the small population. One possible explanation: Two of Ellison’s adult children are Hollywood movie producers (Top Gun: Maverick, Foxcatcher) and are rumored to screen films on the island. lanai96763.com/movies
