Half Moon Montego Bay Eclipse Reopens April 2026
Eclipse at Half Moon is scheduled to reopen on April 2, 2026, restoring a major piece of Montego Bay, Jamaica's luxury hotel inventory after Hurricane Melissa forced a temporary closure in October 2025. The return matters most for travelers planning spring breaks, Easter period trips, weddings, and early summer stays that depend on a full service beachfront resort close to the island's busiest tourism gateway. If you have a trip on the books, the practical next step is to reconfirm your exact room type, the amenities you care about, and your airport transfer plan, because phased reopenings can look "open" while certain venues restart on a staggered timeline.
The Eclipse at Half Moon reopening brings back 57 beachfront accommodations and a core set of on site amenities, with the resort also positioning a reopening promotion aimed at longer stays during the recovery ramp up.
Who Is Affected
Travelers who postponed Jamaica trips after Hurricane Melissa, or who shifted to other islands due to reduced room supply in Montego Bay, are the biggest audience for this reopening. A brand name resort returning typically changes both pricing and availability across the surrounding corridor, because it adds rooms back into the market while pulling some demand away from smaller hotels and villas that absorbed displaced guests.
Air travelers arriving via Sangster International Airport (MBJ) are also affected in a very specific way: Half Moon's proximity makes it attractive for short trips, late arrivals, and weekend stays, but those same itineraries are the least tolerant of friction. If your flight lands late, or if you are connecting onward the next day, a phased property restart can raise the stakes on transfer reliability, check in speed, and whether late night food options are operating as expected. For travelers mixing a resort stay with tours, weddings, golf, or spa time, the key risk is not that the hotel is closed, it is that one or two signature elements you booked around are still operating on limited hours in the first weeks.
Families and multigenerational groups have a separate decision tree. The resort says its reimagined villas are part of the reopening, which can be a strong fit when you want space, privacy, and staffed service in one booking. The tradeoff is that large party trips usually involve nonrefundable air, pre scheduled activities, and multiple airport arrivals, so you should treat confirmation and cancellation terms as part of the trip planning, not an afterthought.
What Travelers Should Do
If you are planning to book, start by validating the exact phase scope for your dates. Confirm in writing which wing you are in, which dining venues are open, whether Fern Tree, A Salamander Spa is operating at full service, and whether golf, tennis, watersports, and family programming are all running on normal schedules. Then lock your ground plan, either the resort's recommended transfers or a vetted private operator, because a ten minute drive can still turn into a missed dinner reservation if arrivals are congested or if luggage delays stack up.
If you already have a reservation, set a decision threshold now. If a must have element, such as a specific restaurant, the spa, golf tee times, or kids programming, is not confirmed for your travel week, move the trip earlier or later only if your airfare and hotel terms allow it without heavy penalties. If your priorities are beach time, pool time, and a dependable room, and those are confirmed, it is usually better to keep your dates and add flexibility elsewhere, such as refundable tours and a buffer between arrival and any timed commitments.
Over the next 24 to 72 hours before you depart, monitor three streams: Half Moon's own property updates, MBJ airport operations for any knock on delays that affect arrival timing, and your airline's schedule changes. If you are arriving on an evening flight, consider building a small buffer by keeping your first night plans simple and avoiding tight same day commitments off the plane, because late inbound flights are where small operational issues become real traveler pain. For context on the airport and arrival flow, use Sangster International Airport (MBJ).
How It Works
Resort reopenings after a major hurricane do not flip on like a light switch, even when a reopening date is public. The first order effect is straightforward: rooms and core facilities come back online, staff return to work, and traveler choice expands again in the destination's primary resort corridor. The second order effects are what shape real trips. As a high profile property restarts, it pulls supply chain services back into motion, food and beverage deliveries, laundry, transportation, and contracted tours, which can tighten capacity elsewhere if those partners are still rebuilding staffing or vehicles. At the same time, the destination's flight and transfer systems absorb demand shifts, because returning inventory can increase arrival volumes on specific days, which is why airport curb flow, taxi availability, and prebooked shuttles become more important than they look on paper.
In Jamaica's case, Hurricane Melissa recovery has also been defined by staggered hotel timelines across Montego Bay and the wider north coast. When one large resort reopens, it can relieve pressure on neighboring properties, but it can also expose remaining gaps, such as limited availability at other closed resorts, or a shortage of premium transport at peak arrival hours. If you are building a larger Jamaica itinerary, it helps to understand the broader reopening pattern and the advisory environment, especially if you are balancing insurance rules, corporate approvals, or nonrefundable costs. Two useful context reads are Jamaica Hotel Reopenings After Hurricane Melissa and Jamaica Travel Advisory Level 2 After Hurricane Melissa.
For this specific reopening, Half Moon is framing Eclipse as the contemporary wing, with open air architecture and gathering spaces, and it is pairing that return with a villa product positioned for larger groups that want staffed service and private indoor outdoor space. The travel planning takeaway is simple: treat April 2, 2026 as the operational restart point, then validate which experiences are live for your exact stay dates, because that is where trip satisfaction is won or lost.