Negril Reopening December 15 After Hurricane Melissa

Published on Dec 3, 2025, 7:06 am CST

8 min read

Key points

Negril resort reopening December 15 marks a key milestone in Jamaica's recovery from Hurricane Melissa
Most Negril boutique hotels and major resorts report restored utilities, cleaned grounds, and growing winter bookings
Some large properties elsewhere in Jamaica, including Bahia Principe in Runaway Bay, will stay closed for renovations into late 2026
Grand Palladium in Hanover and other investors are moving ahead with major new room builds and upgrades from January 2026 onward
Travelers should confirm the status of individual hotels, excursions, and road transfers before arrival and keep plans flexible
Health officials still warn about leptospirosis exposure in recently flooded areas, so visitors should avoid standing water and follow local advice

Impact

Where Impacts Are Most Likely: Negril hotels and attractions are largely ready from December 15 but some tours that cross harder hit parishes and a few big resorts outside Negril will still face phased reopenings
Best Times To Travel: Arrivals from mid December through February should find the widest choice of open rooms and excursions but early December trips may still see a smaller menu of options and occasional service gaps
Onward Travel And Changes: Travelers combining Negril with stays in Runaway Bay, Ocho Rios, or rural areas should double check hotel reopen dates, road conditions, and any schedule changes before locking in nonrefundable flights
What Travelers Should Do Now: Confirm existing Negril reservations for stays on or after December 15, keep communication lines open with hotels or agents, and consider travel insurance that covers weather disruption and medical care
Health And Safety Factors: Follow Jamaican health advisories about leptospirosis, avoid wading through floodwater on side trips, and build margins into itineraries in case local clean up work slows transfers

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Negril resort reopening December 15 is the clearest sign yet that Jamaica's tourism engine is coming back online after Category 5 Hurricane Melissa tore across the island on October 28, 2025. Tourism officials say the beach town's small boutique hotels, larger all inclusive resorts, and headline attractions have restored power, water, and basic services, and are gearing up for the core winter season. For travelers, that means Negril can again anchor Jamaica itineraries from mid December, although plans elsewhere on the island still need more careful checking.

The core change for visitors is that, from December 15 onward, Negril's main hotel strip and surrounding communities are expected to operate close to normal, with enough open rooms, restaurants, and tours to support high season demand. That puts the resort area slightly ahead of the wider island, where some properties and parishes are still working through major repairs and health concerns after one of the strongest Atlantic landfalls on record.

Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett has stressed that Negril's recovery is being driven from the ground up by small Jamaican businesses and their staff, particularly the cluster of low rise, owner operated hotels that line Seven Mile Beach and the West End cliffs. Reports from the ministry and partner agencies describe workers and local residents clearing debris within days of the storm so that power companies and water utilities could restore service, allowing many boutique properties to accept guests again by late November. Larger resorts have followed, bringing online more rooms, restaurants, and excursion desks as checks on structural safety, pools, and beach access are completed.

On the ground, recovery looks uneven but broadly positive for winter travelers. Along the West End, cliffside hotels such as Tensing Pen have already reported strong early winter bookings after community cleanup drives helped reopen paths, decks, and common areas. On the main beach, operators highlight a mix of returning repeat guests and first timers who kept bookings despite the storm, encouraged by clear communication from hotels and tour operators on what services would be available. Attractions like Chukka Ocean Outpost in Sandy Bay have leaned on staff who returned quickly to repair zipline courses, marine operations, and visitor facilities, allowing shore excursion style trips from Montego Bay and Negril to resume.

Guest sentiment is also part of the story officials now tell. Families who chose to keep Thanksgiving and early December trips report that while some amenities were temporarily limited, service levels remained high and beaches, pools, and core dining options were functioning. That pattern matches wider tourism data, which show Jamaica aiming to reopen roughly 60 percent of its hotel inventory by mid December even as Melissa's wider damage still weighs on infrastructure budgets, agriculture, and housing.

Background, what Hurricane Melissa did to Jamaica

Hurricane Melissa came ashore with sustained winds near 185 miles per hour and brought an estimated 30 inches of rain to parts of Jamaica, placing it among the most severe landfalls in Atlantic history. The storm killed dozens of people, destroyed or damaged more than 150,000 homes, and caused initial loss estimates between 8 billion and 10 billion U.S. dollars, hitting both tourism and agriculture hard. Western parishes and resort areas along the north coast took heavy wind and surge damage, with widespread power failures, flooded roads, and landslides that cut off some communities for days.

In the weeks since, Jamaica has reported a leptospirosis outbreak linked to standing floodwater, with health authorities urging both residents and visitors who may come into contact with contaminated water or soil to take precautions and seek medical help quickly if flu like symptoms appear. For visitors, the practical takeaway is to avoid wading through puddles or canals on side trips and to follow local advice in rural areas, rather than a reason to cancel a beach resort stay outright.

To finance long term recovery, the government has assembled a package worth up to 6.7 billion U.S. dollars from multilateral lenders and private investors, including the World Bank, Inter American Development Bank, and the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean. Those funds will back three years of reconstruction work on roads, utilities, schools, hospitals, and key tourism infrastructure. In parallel, domestic disaster risk financing has already freed several hundred million dollars for immediate repairs, clean up, and social support, which helps explain how tourist corridors like Negril are able to restart operations relatively quickly.

Investment signals, which hotels are expanding and which are still shut

Even as some resorts remain closed, hotel groups are signalling long term confidence by pressing ahead with expansion projects. At Grand Palladium Resort & Spa in Hanover, preliminary works have begun for a roughly 1,000 room expansion scheduled to enter full construction in January 2026, part of a wider project that will add new convention and family facilities and introduce the TRS adults only concept to Jamaica. Local reports put the investment around 500 million euros, bolstering room count and meeting space just east of Negril's core resort zone.

Further east in St Ann, Bahia Principe has confirmed it will refurbish about 1,300 rooms and build an additional 365 high end units, aiming for an early 2027 reopening that could employ up to 3,000 workers. However, the Grand Jamaica and Luxury Runaway Bay properties will remain closed until at least December 1, 2026 after Melissa damage forced a one year extension to already planned renovations. For travelers, that means Negril and other open corridors will carry more of the winter 2025 to 2026 load while Runaway Bay stays offline.

Sandals Resorts International, which temporarily closed multiple Jamaican properties after the hurricane, has laid out a reopening schedule that brings five hotels, including flagship Sandals and Beaches brands, back into service by December 6, 2025, with further upgrades to follow. Other all inclusive operators, such as RIU, have also set out phased reopening plans that concentrate early December on Montego Bay and Ocho Rios before ramping up Negril and other locations around mid month. These corporate timelines align with the government's December 15 reopening marker for Negril as a fully functioning resort area.

How to plan a Negril trip after December 15

For most leisure travelers, Negril is again a viable primary base from December 15 onward, especially for beach first itineraries built around Seven Mile Beach and the West End. The main practical steps are to reconfirm all existing bookings, make sure airport transfers are still operating, and ask hotels directly about any remaining limitations, such as temporarily closed room blocks, reduced restaurant hours, or altered water sports offerings. Advisers booking packages should pay close attention to supplier notes, since inventory feeds may lag behind real world reopen dates in global distribution systems.

Travelers who plan to combine Negril with other parts of Jamaica need a more granular approach. Trips that include closed or heavily damaged resorts in Runaway Bay, excursions into hard hit rural parishes, or road trips over landslide prone routes will carry more uncertainty than a simple Negril beach stay. Building extra buffer time into airport transfers, avoiding late night arrivals when back up options are thin, and considering refundable rates or flexible packages can all reduce stress if plans need to change at short notice.

Health considerations should also be part of planning. While resort zones are working to control mosquitoes and sanitize water systems, travelers who expect to spend time hiking, volunteering, or visiting friends in areas that were flooded should consult travel clinics about vaccinations and preventive steps, and keep a low threshold for seeking care if they develop fever or other symptoms. Travel insurance that covers both weather related disruption and medical costs remains a sensible purchase in a year when climate driven extremes are directly shaping tourism seasons across the Caribbean.

Finally, visitors should recognize that, even as resorts reopen and beaches look near pristine again, many local residents and workers are still repairing homes and dealing with losses. Choosing locally owned tours, dining in community run restaurants, and tipping fairly are concrete ways to support the recovery that underpins Negril's December 15 reopening message to the world.