RANK   PREVIOUS   COMPANY



  

1           

1           Monsanto

Hawai`i

  

2           

2           Weinberg

Foundation

  

3           

3           Dowling

Co.

   4           

4           Maui

Electric Co.

   5           

5           Makena

Resort

  

6           

8           Maui Land & Pineapple Co.



  

7            6

          Tesoro Hawai`i

  

8           

7           Wailuku

Water Co.

  

9          

10          Hawaiian Telcom



 

10          

9           Alexander

& Baldwin





SUITE LIFE



It isn't often a big landowner moves up the Maui 10 chart because

its signature hotel announces it will close for six months starting

this summer, but Maui Land & Pineapple isn't your typical

landowner. Starting July 2 of this year, the Ritz-Carlton Kapalua—built

atop land leased from Maui Land a mere 14 years ago—will undergo a

major renovation costing $95 million, according to the Jan. 17 Honolulu

Advertiser. The trick is that the Ritz-Carlton—one of the most

luxurious hotels in all of Hawai`i—will be going partially condo. The

hotel room count will drop from 548 to 470, and for the first time the

hotel will sell off 107 suites for at least $895,000 each. "I think

there's a lot of pent-up demand," Jerry Landeck, a senior partner with

hotel owner Gencom Group, told the paper. "We feel we have a winning

combination of residential use and legendary Ritz-Carlton hotel

service." While not a timeshare—like virtually everything else that's

being built on the Westside—the new Ritz-Carlton will affect the region

in much the same way: owners don't patronize restaurants nearly so

often as hotel guests. Considering how much of the Westside economy

hinges on the service industry, this could eventually be a very big

deal.





GOOD CALLS



After many, many months of abysmal customer service—so much so they

had to call in the services of an outside contractor—Carlyle

Group-owned Hawaiian Telcom finally in December 2006 managed to achieve

a level of answering 70 percent of calls from curious, concerned or

just plain pissed off customers within 20 seconds. This achievement,

still shy of the 85 percent figure mandated by the state Public

Utilities Commission, occurring in what is traditionally a slow month

for customer services calls and a year that has seen a ridiculously low

36 percent response average, is nonetheless evidence of marked

improvement. I'm sure it will please the state investigators who will

spend much of this coming year looking into the phone company's

customer service troubles. MTW