Blackstone Is Exploring the Sale of the 5-Star Grand Wailea Resort in Hawaii

One of Hawaii’s luxury hotels may soon have a new owner.

Blackstone is looking to potentially offload the five-star Grand Wailea resort in Maui, Bloomberg reported on Monday. The alternative asset manager is working with a broker to reach out to prospective buyers, people with knowledge of the proceedings told the outlet. However, only preliminary talks are taking place, and Blackstone could decide to retain the property. (A spokesperson for the investment company declined to comment to Bloomberg.)

The Grand Wailea is an 845-key, 40-acre hotel branded as a Waldorf Astoria property. It can host events for up to 3,200 guests, and it served as the filming location for scenes in the 2011 movie Just Go With It, starring Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler. Blackstone wasn’t the owner then, though: The company acquired the Grand Wailea for some $1.1 billion in 2018, Bloomberg reported at the time.

While the sale is still up in the air at the moment, it has been a rather bountiful time for the buying and selling of luxury hotels. Earlier this year, for example, billionaire Larry Ellison bought the Eau Palm Beach Resort in Florida for an unspecified amount. Just a few months later, the owner of the Ben hotel in West Palm Beach sought to sell that property for a whopping $1 million per room. Proving that Florida is a hot commodity, the Reuben Brothers also bought the W South Beach for more than $400 million, Bloomberg noted.

Blackstone hasn’t been immune to the trend either: Earlier this year, the company decided to sell the Turtle Bay resort in Hawaii for some $680 million, the outlet wrote. Nadeem Meghji, the global co-head of Blackstone Real Estate, addressed that sale on Tuesday, saying that the market has been trending upward.

“The environment is improving,” Meghji told Bloomberg Television. “When you think about sale activity and you think about values, when there are more folks who want to buy real estate, that’s usually a better time to start selling, and so we expect to see even more of that next year.”

Looks like we could see Grand Wailea changing hands in 2025.