In the off season, South Carolina resort hits both high and low notes
The public rooms overlooking the sea at the Sanctuary hotel on Kiawah Island
evoke a bygone era of genteel Southern hospitality, with sweeping
staircases, opulent furnishings and stately portraits. But most of the
guests schlepping through the lobby—including us—are disheveled golfers,
sweaty tennis players and wet kayakers, so the grandeur seems a bit on the
pretentious side.
Fortunately, I found on a recent trip to the swanky South Carolina resort
that no one looks at you crooked if you aren't dressed for tea. And Kiawah's
considerable natural charms—such as frequent alligator sightings, bird life
and dolphin encounters—nicely contrast with the Sanctuary's ersatz version
of the Old South.
Kiawah, a 10-mile barrier isle off the coast of Charleston, once occupied by
the Kiawah Indians and later home to some colonial landowners and a cotton
plantation, was purchased in 1974 by the Kuwaitis, who sold it to U.S.
real-estate developers in 1988. Its oceanfront estates, townhouses and gated
golf communities lured sportsmen, wealthy retirees and nature-lovers, but
Kiawah lacked a high-end hotel until William Goodwin, owner of the Jefferson
in Richmond, Va., and other properties, spent $125 million to build the
four-story, 225-room Sanctuary, aiming to lure affluent guests and lucrative
conference business on a par with luxury properties like Georgia's Sea
Island resort and the Breakers in Palm Beach. Opened five years ago, the
hotel last year won five stars from Mobil and an AAA five-diamond rating.
Now, of course, luxury resorts like the Sanctuary are weathering lower
occupancy, while business meetings have slowed to a trickle. The good news
for guests: High end-properties are cutting rates and offering incentives
such as resort credits to boost business, especially in off-seasons.
At the Sanctuary, starting room rates, now $395 per night, will drop to $270
next month, when the hotel begins to put on the trim for Thanksgiving and
Christmas festivities. The local climate is mild through early winter, and
for me at least, that's preferable to the muggy heat of the prime summer
season. When we were there for a weekend visit earlier this month it was
still in the 80s; at least one pool is heated year round, and all the golf
courses are open. Charleston, about a 45-minute ride away, has many historic
sights, shopping and dining options.
Though the Sanctuary has its shortcomings—such as so-so food and service at
some dining spots—it's a nice year-round spot for a family vacation, a
pampering girl's weekend or a sports outing, with a spa, tennis courts and
access to five golf courses. The hotel's general manager, Vijay Singh, says
the staff has downsized slightly, especially now that the summer season is
over, but that guests shouldn't experience any snafus.
When there was one, the hotel went out of its way to compensate. A rental
car arranged by the concierge and dropped at the hotel for me turned out to
have almost no gas in it—something I realized when I noticed the "empty"
light as I was driving alone on a dark road to meet friends for dinner,
miles from the hotel. I managed to get there, then called the concierge, who
sent someone with a can to fill the tank while we dined. (Mr. Singh says
that the no-gas incident hadn't happened before and that valets will now
check gas levels when cars are delivered.)
While some women friends rented a home among the many available on Kiawah, I
booked a king-bedded room at the hotel, where many rooms have some kind of
ocean view. Of course, some are better than others: The first one, on the
ground floor, was dark and its terrace way too exposed to passersby to feel
private and secure. I asked for a higher floor, and was rewarded with a
spacious and light room with a four poster-bed, pleasant seating area and
shuttered bathroom that could open up to get the ocean view as well. Its
only drawback: Standing at my sink, I could hear every word the couple in
the next room said. (I was relieved that I couldn't hear them in the
bedroom.)
The hotel's lobby, with polished walnut floors, features two parlors with
facing portraits of a lord and lady— knockoffs of John Singer Sargent—designed
to recall an era when women went off to one room after dinner and men
retreated to the bar for a cigar. One afternoon, a guy got into the spirit a
bit too much, despite the hotel-wide no smoking rule, and puffed away at a
smelly stogie in the bar section.
My friends and I rented bikes from the hotel and explored for a couple of
hours on the miles of paved paths, then cut over to the beach, where the
hard-packed sand makes it possible to pedal a bike easily. Riding past ponds
and waterways, we stopped at every "Danger: Alligators" sign and were
thrilled to find plenty floating around. Later, though, came the news
reports that in nearby Beaufort County, a golfer leaned over to pick up a
ball and an alligator bit off part of his arm. (The resort says it's never
heard of an alligator harming anyone on Kiawah.)
But it was fear of tricky greens, not alligators, that kept the golfers
among us off the resort's famed Ocean Course, though we had to take a look.
The stunning Pete Dye-designed course has hosted many championship
tournaments and is famed for having more seaside holes than any other course
in the Northern Hemisphere, with unobstructed ocean views—and brisk and
unpredictable sea breezes. Tee times can fill up quickly on weekends, so
it's best to plan ahead, but the hotel says that with fewer corporate
groups, a sell-out of the Ocean Course by a single group doesn't happen as
often as it used to. Besides four other courses there's an instruction
program.
The hotel has a decent fitness center and an indoor pool, where I did some
laps, a big outdoor family pool with a massive fountain in the center, and a
quieter, but very small adults-only pool overlooking the dunes. Some very
beat-up- looking lounge chairs and cushions didn't do much for the area.
(Mr. Singh says the hotel is replacing them.)
Much more attractive was the spa with 13 treatment rooms. A Low Country
Verbena Polish involved an exfoliating cleansing scrub with buffing grains
blended with extracts of sea algae and vitamins, followed by a shower to
rinse it all off and a massage. The 90-minute therapy was expensive, about
$300 including the automatic gratuity, but the therapist was excellent and
the room itself lovely.
Dining disappointed us. At the Jasmine Porch dining room off the pool area,
we waited over 45 minutes for salads and sandwiches, though there were few
other guests. When we asked a manager what had happened to the food, he said
our special requests were holding everything up—though the only requests
we'd made were to leave onions off a salad and to put some dressings on the
side. We were looking forward to the beautiful views at the Atlantic Room in
the Ocean Course clubhouse, but my jambalaya ($32) was just a couple of
overcooked shrimps and scallops on the plate and a small pile of rice, with
little flavor. Friends who ordered seafood stew ($33) and poached salmon
($31) found theirs bland and skimpy as well.
Back outdoors, our favorite activity by far was the guided kayak tour, about
$50 a person, through the salt marshes, where we plied the winding
waterways, gliding though some heavy reeds in search of herons, egrets,
loons and pelicans. Our guide assured us alligators would stay away because
they don't like the salt water. Big creatures did surface in front of our
kayaks: dolphins, with whom we didn't mind getting up close and personal in
the least.
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