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The city behind the course

A Honolulu weekend

Start with the places the marathon actually passes.

The route's local signatures

Meet the architecture and landscape along the course. Use these places to get to know the city before deciding how to spend your time on your feet.

Aloha Tower

Near mile 1.6

Built into the flyover as a race-specific local landmark. The model rises about 56 meters.

First Hawaiian Center

Near mile 2.0

Built into the flyover as a race-specific local landmark. The model rises about 131 meters.

Ilikai Hotel & Luxury Suites

Near mile 4.4

Built into the flyover as a race-specific local landmark. The model rises about 78 meters.

Hilton Hawaiian Village Rainbow Tower

Near mile 4.5

Built into the flyover as a race-specific local landmark. The model rises about 87 meters.

Sheraton Waikiki

Near mile 5.3

Built into the flyover as a race-specific local landmark. The model rises about 96 meters.

The Royal Hawaiian Hotel

Near mile 5.4

Built into the flyover as a race-specific local landmark. The model rises about 24 meters.

Moana Surfrider (historic Moana Hotel)

Near mile 5.5

Built into the flyover as a race-specific local landmark. The model rises about 23 meters.

Hyatt Regency Waikiki (twin towers)

Near mile 5.6

Built into the flyover as a race-specific local landmark. The model rises about 118 meters.

A weekend rhythm that protects race day

  1. Arrival. Base your first walk on the real start and finish geometry, then inspect the final approach in the route map.
  2. Packet pickup. Go to Hawaii Convention Center (Kamehameha Hall) inside its published window; save the final hours offline.
  3. The day before. Choose one course landmark, keep the outing short, and finish your feet-up time early.
  4. Race day. Follow the transportation plan, not ordinary weekend traffic directions.
  5. After the finish. Let the finish-area access plan decide the meal and meetup, especially on a point-to-point course.

Where the weekend should be based

The mistake here is booking near the start. The start is on Ala Moana Boulevard at the Queen Street Extension, the finish is at Kapiolani Park roughly two miles away at the far Diamond Head end of Waikiki, and everything you want after the race (your shower, your bag, your medal, your food) is at the finish end. The official partner hotels make the geometry obvious: the Outrigger Waikiki Beach Resort lists itself as 2.2 miles from the start and 0.6 miles from the finish. Book for the finish and treat the start as a 30-to-40-minute pre-dawn walk, because that walk is easy and the trip back from Kapiolani Park at 9 a.m. with dead legs is not. The other thing runners underestimate is the tow-away window. Tow-away zones are in effect from midnight until 5 p.m. Sunday, and Monsarrat Avenue from Kalakaua to Paki is signed no-parking tow-away on both sides. If your rental car is on a street rather than in a garage, move it Saturday night.

Compare the actual hotel geometry →

Course geometry provenance is stated beside the player; elevation profiles always use the same route loaded there. City geometry is OpenStreetMap, ODbL. Aerial imagery is from USGS and USDA; other images carry their own source credits. Weather figures use Open-Meteo reanalysis for December 9-17 across 2016-2025 at the start line. Schedule, prices and expo hours were checked in 2026-08-26 and are the fields most likely to move: confirm them on www.honolulumarathon.org before you book anything. Spot an error? Tell us and we'll fix it fast.