BLACK BOOK ENCLAVE
BLACK BOOK ENCLAVE Clockwise from far left: the beach at Jamaica’s Half Moon; the resort in 1979; Debbie Reynolds and her children vacationing there Majestic Isolation A storied Jamaican resort adds rooms without sacrificing its legendary sense of privacy, reports BEN RYDER HOWE Hotels often want to tell you what they have: Michelinstarred cuisine, Himalayan salt caves, sushi concierges. In September 2017, when the Half Moon in Jamaica launched a million renovation, the goal was to show off what the resort didn’t have. “We have the luxury of space – lots of it,” says Guy Steuart, the Half Moon’s chairman. The resort wanted to add capacity, and with around three kilometres of uninterrupted Montego Bay beachfront, “we could have put stacks of towers hard against the beach”. Instead, the resort chose to set its new rooms low and well back from the water, something only a property as generously endowed as the 162ha Half Moon could do. “What sets us apart is abundance,” says Steuart. “You don’t feel constrained or compromised.” The centrepiece of the renovation – completed last autumn – is a complex called the Great House, which architects were able to position parallel to the waterfront, exposing each room to trade winds while creating sightlines, “so that there’s nothing in front of you except ocean, sunrises and sunsets. We don’t need to crowd anything.” The renovation coincides with the 65th anniversary this year of the Half Moon, one of the Caribbean’s oldest resorts. Founded by 17 prominent families from the US, UK and Bermuda, the hotel has been visited by Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Princess Caroline of Monaco, and John F Kennedy, who spent a month there before his presidential inauguration. The resort’s original 14ha plot has been enlarged more than tenfold while keeping the number of guests relatively low. “You will never have to race to the beach to secure a chaise here,” says Steuart, whose grandparents were among the Half Moon’s original investors. (His father also served as chairman.) An additional benefit of the renovation is its non-impact environmentally. Like most Caribbean resorts, Half Moon has seen the kind of waterfront damage that comes not only from overdevelopment but also from hurricanes and changing seas. The new landscape was designed, as Steuart says, to “let the sea come in, dissipate its energy, leave sand and generally do what it wants.“ halfmoon.com. PHOTOS CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: © HALF MOON (2); BETTMANN ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES 50 CENTURION CONTACT CENTURION SERVICE FOR BOOKINGS
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