Virginie Nadimi
Google
We'd been looking forward to our stay at The Palmwood for months, drawn in by glowing reviews, a beautiful website, and the promise of a peaceful retreat. Unfortunately, the experience fell far short of expectations. For a small b&b charging nearly $600 a night, I expected a lot more. Stay elsewhere. I am re-reading these other reviews and feel like I'm being gaslight. I'm starting to wonder if these are reviews by influencers or I just don't know.
The good: Breakfast was delicious. It was consistently fresh and beautifully prepared.
Everything else: not so good. We stayed in the West Room, and the accommodations were a major letdown. The room does not have air conditioning - a critical detail that’s completely missing from the website. Even with the windows open and ceiling fan running, the space was uncomfortably warm and humid at night and stifling during the day. None of the rooms have a/c. It's sparsely furnished and lacked the warm, serene vibe suggested by the photos. Despite what the website photos, there are only 2 uncomfortable memory foam bed pillows. The lighting was limited to overhead fixtures. There are no bedside lamps, floor lamps, or table lamps. The view of the valley is completely blocked by a dense bamboo grove, and the “waterfall feature” outside sounds more like a bathtub running on full blast than anything tranquil. None of the rooms have a valley view due to the bamboo - the view of the valley is mostly visible from pool area that we could not enjoy due to it the pool being broken. We learned upon arrival that the pool had been closed for weeks due to storm damage. This was not mentioned in the welcome email we received just one day before check-in - which, in fact, still promoted the pool as a shared guest amenity. When we arrived, Eddi briefly mentioned the pool closure while going over parking and breakfast logistics, brushing it off as a minor detail. We shared that we were really bummed about the pool and Eddi shrugged. We were disappointed and, after settling in, emailed requesting a partial refund. Thankfully, Eddi agreed—but only after we reached out. We later learned another couple canceled their entire stay that day because of the misleading photos, lack of a/c, and broken pool. In hindsight, we probably should have done the same, but finding a last minute replacement on Kauai isn’t easy (or fun).
The most disappointing part was the lack of hospitality.
We chose a B&B hoping for warmth, personal connection, and local insight. Instead, Eddi, though polite, felt distant and disengaged. It felt like she just does not want to engage with guests in any way, which is strange and feels unwelcoming for the owner of a small bed and breakfast. Aside from dropping off breakfast and saying "good morning", we hardly saw her. Several times, I had to ask what was the beautiful breakfast that she had just dropped off and she was almost surprised that I wanted engage in basic conversation. When we ran into a rental car issue, she seemed uninterested in learning what happened, helping out when we determined that we needed to take an Uber to the car, and she never followed up the next days to ask how things turned out. Not once did she ask us what we had planned for our trip. On the day of checkout, despite our luggage clearly being packed and ready, she didn’t ask about our stay or even say goodbye.
In short, the misleading presentation of the property, lack of hospitality, poor communication left us disappointed and unable to fully enjoy our time at The Palmwood. This part of Kauai is absolutely stunning, and we were hoping for a more welcoming, guest-centered experience. We had stayed at a different B&B near Lawai, Kauai earlier in our trip and had a far better experience there—at a more affordable rate, with a pool, a direct view, a/c and without the curated social media image that the Palmwood has. In contrast, The Palmwood’s website and Instagram presence paint an idealized picture that, in our experience, didn’t match anything like its reality.
