Korolevu Beach Hotel - Fiji

Warwick, Fiji

Construction of the Korolevu Beach Hotel began in 1948.

Situated along the Coral Coast, halfway between Nadi and Suva, a stretch of coast long known as the Fijian Riviera.

The Korolevu in its day was a landmark beachfront development which drew colonial expatriates from the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. This hotel fostered the beginning of mass market tourism to Fiji.

Original Korolevu proprietor Bill Clark is said to have confided to a friend that it was economics that prompted his design choice for the individual accommodation units, since local villagers could build them for a fraction of the cost of building Western-style buildings. His plan was to recreate a typical Fijian village with everything tourists would need.

Later, Clark acknowledged that he knew the Fijian word bure originally referred to a temple building, and the individual units should really have been called valevakaviti, the Fijian-style stand-alone hut. But Clark surmised rightly of course that tourists would never get their tongues around the proper name.

Clark got much of his inspiration for building Korolevu after travelling to Honolulu and seeing how indigenous tourism was rapidly evolving on the island. He brought back innovations like the lounge bar, and built his accommodation block facing out over the beach to the reef, and extensively landscaping around the accommodation.

This tourism visionary also came up with Fijian-themed entertainment, put on feasts every night and introduced cultural shows to educate guests about "local" ways of life.

During its heyday, it is said the martinis flowed like water, the parties were wild and families also enjoyed the wide open expanse of land and safe swimming beaches. Partying colonials were joined by large numbers of American tourists flown in by Pan American Airlines whose planes stopped at Nadi to refuel before heading on to Auckland or Sydney.

Added to the customer mix were regular air crews from Pan Am, BOAC, Qantas, Teal and later Air New Zealand who all helped to make the hotel renowned for its lively atmosphere.

The bar photo below shows that there were tikis on the support pillars, in addition to the abundance of bamboo and other natural materials used to make the interiors the equal (if not superior) to other contemporary Honolulu bars Clark may have seen prior to his build-out.

Two unrelated events saw the Korolevu Beach Resort close down in 1983. First a major hurricane destroyed power lines all around the Coral Coast, and caused substantial damage to the hotel.

It took almost a year for power to be restored, and without mains electricity the hotel could not cater to guests.

Soon after, a lease-holding dispute erupted. Land ownership is complex in Fiji, the land title for the Korolevu hotel spread over nine freehold titles, three contiguous native leases and a Crown lease to the deep water access.

The dispute escalated until all the hotel’s furnishings and fittings were removed over one night, leaving the once effervescent hotel stripped of every shred of charm and character.

Faced with a massive reinvestment to get the venue up and running again, its owners, all close to retirement, decided it was easier to shut up completely. They eventually sold the site in 1991 to Northern Hotels who at the time unveiled major plans to re-establish a tourism operation on the prominent headland and adjoining hillsides.

But no plan to redevelop the site has ever materialized...