Without so much as a sales center or model unit built, the owner of Royal Lahaina Resort recently signed up 29 buyers for 126 planned luxury condominiums priced from $2 million to $11 million at the resort along Maui's Ka'anapali Beach.

Purchase reservations made about two weeks ago at an opening sales event were for an average unit price of $3.5 million, or just over $100 million in total, according to resort representatives.

"We met our projections," said Scott Nelson, sales manager for the project's brokerage firm, Royal Lahaina Realty. "We're quite happy."

Nelson said most prospective buyers were from the Mainland West Coast, with some from the Midwest and Canada. A few people from Maui also reserved units, he said.

Converting reservations to sales contracts is expected in the fourth quarter, though it isn't certain all reservations will be converted to binding contracts because buyers can cancel reservations without financial penalty.

Still, the initial response is another indicator that even though Hawai'i's overall housing market has cooled with fewer sales, flattening prices and some pulling back by residential builders, interest from second-home buyers and investors in luxury resort condos remains relatively strong.

"We feel this is a tremendous start with very little available to present to the public," said Robert H. Merriman, director of new development for Wailea Group LLC, which formed Royal Lahaina Realty.

A $1 million sales center with partial model units is about to start construction, though other elements of the project such as a spa operator and a celebrity chef restaurant have not been selected.

The Royal Lahaina condo project is part of a $350 million redevelopment plan announced in late 2005 for the roughly 40-year-old resort owned by the Hogan family, which founded travel service Pleasant Hawaiian Holidays.

The redevelopment plan entails renovating the property's 12-story main hotel with 333 rooms, and developing eight low-rise buildings with 126 units after demolishing roughly 200 hotel units spread among a low-rise building and cottages.

As a whole, total units at the resort would decline from 536 to 459, and transform the mid-price resort on 27 acres into a luxury hotel with multimillion-dollar condos that can be used as full-time residences, part-time residences or rented out for short-term vacation or hotel rentals.

The project is one of several in Hawai'i aiming to capitalize on Hawai'i's strong vacation home market by converting hotel units to condos or time-shares for sale to individual buyers.

Similar projects in the works or completed include the Ilikai Hotel, Waikiki Beach Walk by Outrigger Enterprises, Ala Moana Hotel, Kaua'i's Coco Palms Hotel and the Ritz-Carlton Kapalua on Maui.

Merriman of Wailea Group said developers are responding to visitors who prefer to own year-round vacation property and receive hotel-like amenities and services when they visit.

"There's this movement in the industry that the new generation of buyer — the changing of the guard, if you will, from empty nesters to baby boomers — has put new demands on the qualities of resort communities."

Gary Hogan, principal of project developer Royal Lahaina Development Group LLC, said demolition of the old low-rise hotel units is expected to begin around October and take two or three years to complete.

The renovation of the main hotel has been completed.

Reach Andrew Gomes at agomes@honoluluadvertiser.com.