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Half Moon Club

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Hotel Overview

Caribbean classic favored by dignitaries, families This long-established destination resort near Montego Bay provides a complete vacation, from water sports to horseback riding. Guest accommodations range from rooms to suites to five-bedroom villas with private pools, housekeeper, cook, and butler. A shuttle whisks guests to tranquil beaches, swimming pools, health spa, golf course, shopping village, and children's center. Note: This resort is undergoing renovation through November, 2003. Less than five of the resort's 400 acres will be affected by the renovations.

Location

Montego Bay (Jamaica)
Embracing Sangster Airport, the north island’s main market center, and some of the most venerable luxury resorts, “Mobay” is Jamaica with a bit of decorum. The region offers Jamaica’s greatest variety of lodgings, from cottages to grand resorts, and well-organized visits to plantations and natural attractions. The drive to Negril takes an hour.

Rosehall Main Road
Montego Bay,
Jamaica

General information

What to expect: Queen Elizabeth II stayed here when visiting Jamaica. Fidel Castro slept here. So did George H. Bush when he was vice president. The Jamaican prime minister brings visiting dignitaries to lunch. Since 1954 when it opened as a cluster of cottages on crescent-shape Half Moon Bay on Jamaica's north shore, Half Moon Club has served as a destination for luminaries, celebrities, and not-as-famous couples and families from America and around the world seeking R & R in a Caribbean plantation-style resort echoing with Jamaica's British-colonial past.

Amenity highlights: Guests have best of both worlds: To the west of the resort’s main buildings is 2-mile Caribbean Sea frontage that includes Sunset Beach on calm, crescent-shape Half Moon Bay, which is the focus of swimming and non-motorized water sports. To the east of these buildings is long, uncrowded Sunrise Beach (protected by an artificial reef) offering motorized sports, sunbathing, tranquil ocean watching, and a dolphin-encounter lagoon. The resort's principal pool area consists of a 25-meter lap pool and a free-form pool connected by a waterfall complex containing water slides and a large swim-up bar. (Completion in December 2003.) Another pool offers tranquil swimming and sunbathing in a red brick courtyard adjacent to a bar/snack bar.

Insider tip: Swinging from seagrape trees along Half Moon Bay, three rustic, cage-like hammock-chairs provide shady relaxation for a lucky few each day. Some guests commission the artisan to construct one or more of the wood-frame, rattan-wrapped hammock-chairs for their homes.

Property amenities

Continuously refreshed by plantings from its own nursery, the resort constitutes a vast botanical preserve, complete with protected 25-acre wetland. All manner of palms, trees (including almond and fruit), shrubs, bushes, and blossoms grace the resort's 400 acres. Small, semi-secret places are everywhere, some with benches facing lawns screened by dense tropical foliage, others with birdbaths and statues, and still others consisting of dense palm or tree groves. Surprises abound such as stumps carved into bird and sealife images and sculpted bushes.

Half Moon Club's attention to nature earned it admission to The Caribbean Green Hall of Fame, the first hotel so honored. And the grounds are one reason for the resort consistently appearing on Conde Nast Traveler's Top 50 Tropical Resorts list and Travel + Leisure 's Top 25 Caribbean Hotels list.

Occupying its own building, the resort's health spa offers complimentary men's and women's saunas and steam rooms and, for fees, massage, body treatments, facials, and nail care. Treatment rooms include those for hydrotherapies such as Moor Mud Bath, Tyrolean Stone Oil Bath and Wrap, Vichy shower, and Swiss shower. A large, pavilion-like couples room includes a two-person jetted tub, twin tables beneath a ceiling mirror, and two cushioned rattan lounge chairs. Couples choices include Lovers' Fantasy (jet tub, candlelight, soft music, champagne) and Tropical Escape (massage, jet tub, champagne).

Body treatments include exfoliations such as Aroma Salt Glo (Dead Sea salts and oils), Gentle Polish (apricot-kernel cream), and Body Gomage (aromatic steambath, scrub with sea sand, oats, and aromatic oils). Body wraps include herbal, sea algae, and rehydrating-oil. Facials include Aromatic Hydrator, Sun Soother, and Deep Pore Cleanser. Massage options include Swedish, sports, aroma, and in a seaside gazebo.

An enormous, complimentary fitness center provides Nautilus weight-training machines and free weights in one air-conditioned room and cardio equipment and aerobics classes in another. Yoga classes are offered in a separate building. Water aerobics are also available. (Fees charged for classes.)

Located in a quiet, secluded area shaded by trees and bamboo, a complimentary children's center includes a two-story air-conditioned clubhouse, a fish-feeding pond, playground equipment, a thatch playhouse, video games, video movies, and a pool with a short waterslide. Supervisors offer half- and full-day activity sessions for ages 3-6 and ages 7-12.

The resort includes both a shopping arcade with international-brand-name boutiques and a Shopping Village. Featuring canary-yellow buildings with red tile roofs, the village includes shops, the Bob Marley Experience (68-seat theater for free video biography and souvenirs), a 24-bed hospital, a dentist, a bank, a post office, a grocery, a beauty shop, a public school, and two restaurants.

Complimentary shuttle service transports guests, stopping at selected points every 20 minutes including the golf course, the Shopping Village, and to Sugar Mill Restaurant near the golf course. Bicycles and golf carts are available for rent.

• Outdoor pool
• Private beach
• Poolside bar
• Swim-up bar
• Children's pool
• Spa or sauna
• Spa (massage)
• Concierge
• Complimentary newspaper
• Fitness center
• Bar/lounge
• Restaurant
• Room service (limited hours)
• Valet parking
• Free parking
• Limousine service available
• Banquet facilities
• Business center
• Conference rooms
• Audio/visual equipment
• Internet access
• Wake-up calls
• Safe-deposit box - front desk
• Porter/bellhop
• Express check-in/check-out
• Doorman
• Security guard
• 24-hour front desk
• Multilingual staff
• Medical services
• Currency exchange
• Barber/beauty shop
• Banking/ATM
• Gift shops or newsstand
• Shopping/stores
• Babysitting or child care
• Maid service daily
• Domestic help available
• Turndown service
• Dry cleaning service
• Shoe shine
• Grocery
• Arcade/game room
• Garden
• Video library
• Pool table
• Air conditioning
• Suitable for children
• Caters to families
• Children's programs
• Rollaway beds
• Cribs available
• Wheelchair accessible

Policies

Listed room charges apply to a maximum number of guests for each room category. A charge is levied for each extra guest age 12 and older. There are no extra-guest charges for children aged 11 and younger (except for the Christmas-New Year's period).
A one-night cancellation fee (three nights during Christmas-New Year's period) will be assessed for a departure date other than booked at time of registration.
A three-night charge will be assessed for no-shows.
Rollaways and cribs are available and should be requested at the time of booking; fees might apply.
Photo identification and credit card or cash deposit are required upon check-in for incidental charges.
All special requests are subject to availability upon check-in.

• Pets not allowed
• Check-in time is 3 PM
• Check-out time is Noon

Dining

Seagrape Terrace - Air-conditioned dining room in main building and expansive ocean-view terrace seating at wrought-iron tables under buttonwood trees decorated with tiny white mood lights. Afternoon island music, nightly dance music. Buffet and a la carte breakfasts. Soups, salads, sandwiches, burgers, fish, steak, jerk chicken for lunch. Dinner choices include curried lobster salad, sweet potato crab cakes, broiled snapper with bananas and almonds, steak, and broiled beef tenderloin.

Il Giardino - Located next to Seagrape Terrace. Air-conditioned dining room with gray marble floor, sponged rose walls. Ocean-view terrace seating at wrought-iron tables. Italian cuisine featuring vegetables, herbs from resort garden. Choices include tagliolini with shellfish in crayfish sauce, goat cheese-celery ravioli with walnut pesto, osso buco, rack of lamb, and grilled swordfish. Dinner only.

Sugar Mill Restaurant - Located in garden near golf course. Adjacent to 200-year-old working water wheel. Inside, veranda, and terrace seating. Jamaican specialties such as curried crayfish bisque; chicken-pineapple stew; dasheen-crusted mahi mahi; roasted duck with warm pineapple-cabbage salad; jerked chicken, pork, fish combination. Also, grilled steaks, fish. Dinner only.

La Baguette - Large, open-air pavilion with ocean view near pool in resort's main section. Brick floor, rattan seating, colorful seat cushions, and yellow walls. Continental breakfast. Afternoon snacks and tropical drinks. Pool table.

The resort's Shopping Village contains two privately owned restaurants, The Royal Stocks English Pub & Steakhouse featuring traditional pub fare and Jamaican specialties for lunch and dinner and Sakura, a Japanese teppanyaki restaurant open for dinner only.

Following a complimentary cocktail reception on Monday and Friday evenings, the resort offers a beach barbecue at picnic tables under trees decorated with lights. A steel band plays before and after crab races in the sand.

The resort contains six bars, including Lester's Bar off the lobby, a beach bar, and a golf-course bar.

Rooms

This resort offers 418 guestrooms. Queen Anne-style mahogany furniture; Jamaican paintings.

Room amenities

• Cable/satellite TV
• Air conditioning
• Climate control
• Voice mail
• Telephone
• Modem Internet access
• Mini/honor bar
• Coffee/tea maker
• Extra towels, linens, bedding
• Bathrobes
• Hair dryer
• Iron/ironing board
• In-room safe
• Television
• Window open-operating
• Clock radio
• Desk
• Smoking rooms
• Non-smoking rooms
• Wheelchair accessible