It’s sunset as I sit at an elegantly appointed table on my lanai and watch a strip of clouds riding the Pacific turn slate blue and bright pink. My butler is serving a four-course dinner prepared just for me by the resort's chef, who is bustling away in my kitchen. After the meal I'll curl up on the very same sofa on which Kevin Costner and Steven Spielberg may have sat and catch The Sopranos on my fifty-inch flat-panel television. The setting is Hawaii's Big Island, where I have checked into one of the Mauna Lani resort's bungalows, favored decompression chambers of overstressed Hollywood types. It's a win-win holiday: I have the privacy and space of my own two-bedroom dwelling, plus all the resort's facilities and services are at my command, including a personal butler who will spend the whole day in my bungalow if I wish. The beach and pool lie nearby; a massage, tennis lesson or tee time on either of the property's two courses is a mere phone call away. It's a graceful way to vacation on the Big Island's sun-drenched Kohala Coast and an increasingly popular one. Tom Hagen, who owns South Kohala Management, the biggest player in house rentals, says that after the doldrums of the '90s, the second-home market is particularly hot right now: "It's exploding. People feel it's a good bet economically, plus it's American and it's safe. We get a lot of people who say Maui is too crowded. The Big Island is the new frontier."

Two of the coast's most luxurious resorts, the Mauna Kea Resort and the Four Seasons Resort Hualalai, run their own rental programs, offering dozens of magnificent privately owned houses that overlook seacoast or golf greens. The five bungalows at Mauna Lani Bay Hotel & Bungalows are part of the hotel; privately owned houses on the resort's 3,200 acres are offered for rent by local real estate agents, such as Big Island Villas, or through the Exclusive Resorts vacation club. It's easy to understand why this island is grabbing the limelight. Geologically the youngest sibling in the Hawaiian chain and a latecomer to tourism, the Big Island offers a bewitching combination of natural wonders—pristine aqua waters, the state's only active volcanoes, vast stretches of cattle country—and fewer travelers to book up the facilities and crowd the roads. Picture an island where the loop road can be driven in a day and where twelve of the world's climate zones reign: you can hike to a waterfall that tumbles hundreds of feet through glistening rain forest and watch a volcano pump fiery red lava into the sea. In the winter, snow frosts the nearly 14,000-foot peaks of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, and tourists add whale watching to the island's complement of water sports: snorkeling and scuba diving, kayaking and canoeing, sailing and deep-sea fishing. You can ride a mule into the mountains and imagine the glory days of Parker Ranch, when paniolos (Hawaiian for "cowboys") looked after 50,000 head of cattle on the United States' largest spread; visit the birthplace of Kamehameha, the Hawaiian king who united the islands 200 years ago; and see ancient petroglyphs of the icons of age-old Hawaiian life: dancers, fishermen and canoes.

While some of the other Hawaiian islands began waking up to the benefits of tourism in the first half of the 20th century, the Big Island remained off-limits to vacationers until the mid-1960s, when Laurance Rockefeller sailed by the desert-dry Kohala Coast and envisioned a resort rising there, in a place whose climate—temperatures in the breezy mid-seventies, less than ten inches of rainfall a year—was ideal for travelers. He created Mauna Kea, Kohala's first high-end resort. Meanwhile, twenty miles to the south, a South Pacific sailor-adventurer was building to a very different beat, erecting Kona Village Resort, a collection of rustic hales, or simple thatch-roofed cottages raised on stilts, that mimicked those in a traditional Polynesian community. The Mauna Lani luxury resort followed, in 1989, and eight years ago Hualalai upped the ante with the coast's most elegant digs yet, managed by Four Seasons. All these places offer superb facilities; the trick is zeroing in on the one that suits your style.

MAUNA LANI BUNGALOWS: TECH LOVERS, TAKE NOTE!

For years the Mauna Lani bungalows have attracted the famous with their siren call of utter privacy and seamless personal service. Two of them, screened by hedges and surrounded by a koi-filled moat, face a golf course; the other three look out on the beach. But drop-dead views are only part of the appeal; the other major draw here is the personal butler, who is at your service all day. She can unpack your bags, book spa treatments and tee times at either of the resort's two award-winning courses and have the chef come over and whip up dinner. She'll stock the kitchen with any foods you require—pineapple; rich Kona coffee, grown on the slopes of the nearby volcano, Hualalai—and serve pupu, Hawaiian appetizers, every evening. Whatever your fantasy, it is her job to make it real: when I wanted to ride horseback but had neglected to bring heavy-duty trousers, my butler produced a pair of her own jeans.