Rainmaker Hotel was a former luxury hotel that featured 250 rooms, located in the village of Utule’I, in the Maoputasi County, in the Eastern District of the main island of Tutuila, which forms the unincorporated and unorganized territory of the United States in the Pacific Ocean, American Samoa. As it was the only proper hotel in American Samoa, the hotel was operated and taken care of by the government, however, as of the end of the 2010s, the hotel has been converted into multiple facilities, mainly for educational purposes. Erected by the Pan American Airways in 1959, in the past it was known as the Pacific’s Intercontinental Hotel, which was also the peak of its operation. The hotel opened in 1960s, immediately gaining popularity and remaining popular until the end of the 1970s.
The hotel maintained the tall thatched roofs to give the flavor of a South Pacific island. The name Rainmaker comes from the Rainmaker Mountain which is located above the Pago Pago Harbour. Due to the volcanic structure of the island with fringing reefs, the sand which was imported and made from coral, does not build up like the continental beaches. The hotel was hit by a big disaster in 1980, when a US Navy plane hit the cables of the Mt. Alava aerial tramway and crashed into the hotel, killing the six servicemen aboard and two tourists who were staying at the hotel. The hotel manager at that time refused to erect a memorial inside the hotel grounds. The fate of the hotel is really not good at all. In 1990s due to hurricane damage, poor management, and accumulated debts, the hotel fell into hard times. Out of the 250 rooms which were rented from the beginning, slowly were “cut down” and in 2004, only 10 rooms were being operated.
The plan was for what remained of the once magnificent Rainmaker Hotel to be soon completely demolished by local company E&W Construction that won the bid for the contract, however, the Hotel is still partially being removed, with asbestos taken from the ground. Nonetheless, recent reports do not have these plans set as a concrete ones, and whether the whole buildings complex will be removed, or something will be left as a memory remains to be seen.
