Royalton negril ?

[Accompong]

The more people walking around with wristbands that identify them as "Daddy Warbucks" only makes things better for those who walk around under the target radar.

I suppose that the little more than $1 US per hour wages helps those that can get employment there. The hours and output requirements make this a modern day servitude to bakra

More small to medium size businesses in a similar setting to the mega-structures actually help the Jamaican economy more through taxes and employment than a place than Royalton.

Just my opinion.

[Papa Georgie]

We stayed on the North Coast last year...our first break from Negril in 20 some years. This is what the North coast looks like. High rise , tall , tall buildings. I'd be afraid to be stranded up on the top floors of these monsters. You lose current, you walk down the stairs...crazy. To each his own, I guess.

[Patricia]

We stayed on the North Coast last year...our first break from Negril in 20 some years. This is what the North coast looks like. High rise , tall , tall buildings. I'd be afraid to be stranded up on the top floors of these monsters. You lose current, you walk down the stairs...crazy. To each his own, I guess.

Not all North Coast properties are of the "high rise" persuasion ~ we're heading to Runaway Bay next Spring, staying at Royal Decameron Club Caribbean where their accommodations are individual cottages ~~

[Papa Georgie]

Of course not all properties are high rises. We stayed at the Cardiff Hotel in Runaway bay...small hotel. The H.E.A.R.T hospitality training school uses the hotel as on hands training. Interesting experience. To me, the high rises dominate the coast road from Montego Bay to Ocho Rios and beyond.

[jamaicajeanne]

We stay on the Ochi side most of the time and I agree that the drive from Mo Bay to Ochi has some extraordinarily tall/large resorts....not our cup of tea, but would hate to see Negril start looking like that. We generally stay at an Issa property on that side.

[Irieonline]

I totally agree with you Accompong. Most people who stay at places like that barely leave the property except maybe for a tour or two and pump very little money into the local economy. I wish none of the big ai resorts were never built in Negril. I have always liked the smaller family run hotels, restruants, bars and shops. But change and progress is hard to stop so i try to find some good in everything. It will employ alot of people and it should bring alot of first time tourists to Negril. Just maybe some of those tourists will venture off the property and find out what Negril is really like and discover what it is that keeps alot of us board members coming back year after year and come back again and stay in one of the smaller properties that are family run.

[Accompong]

I tend to think that the high-rise All Inclusives will attract tourists as well as people eager to prey on them. It may turn into a self-fulfilling prophesy that Negril will be the "unsafe" place to venture off the properties for them as their owners warn and thus more unsafe for the majority of board readers who return each year to the smaller, family run accommodations.

Just my opinion but I would never go to anyplace that required me to be easily identified as a guest such as a bracelet, shirt, etc.

As a friend says, "A beggar with a bag of money is safer than a man in a suit with a dollar in his pocket"

Peace and Guidance

[Papa Georgie]

Wow, they are still putting bracelets on guest....jeez.

[brownsd54]

I'm just not sure how the Royalton will due in Negril. It seems that the Royalton is more about the lifestyle of the rich and famous, but Negril is the total opposite of that IMHO. Negril is laid back, no hustle, no worries kinda place where people watching can be a full time sport and sand gravity affects us all. Yes, Negril has some high end hotels like Sandals, RIU Tropical Bay, The RockHouse and such. They draw a high end class of people or people that have saved for years to be there, but even those places are pretty laid back. $4,000 a week for the low end rooms and not including airfare just seems a little above and beyond Negril. Time will only tell.

We might just have to make up a drinking game on the beach. You know, spot the Royalton guests.

[Accompong]

Wow, they are still putting bracelets on guest....jeez.

Some don't but the majority still do.

Bracelets are useful to determine who is in the zoo and who are just spectators so the zoo can maintain it's purity. However, should a bracelet-wearing guest manage to escape, it makes it easier to cull them from the herd.