Jewel Grande Montego Bay Resort & Spa

We stayed for a week with 3 kids in one of the Airbnb rentals they have, so this review is reflective on the resort itself and not our specific condo (which was amazing, but privately owned). First, everyone was very nice and the grounds and pool areas are lovely. Our view from the hotel was gorgeous. Breakfast buffet was great, as were the two other restaurants we tried (Waves and the steakhouse). However, we will not return to Jewel Grande for following reasons: #1) The beach and water was a major disappointment for swimming, as it was full of seaweed and beach debris. The sailboat and kayaks were great, but if you are envisioning a vacation full of swimming in pristine water on a white sand tropical beach, this is definitely not it. We wound up doing day trips off property and utilizing better beaches elsewhere. #2) The layout of the back of property is very weird and has a ton of steps up/down to get anywhere. Absolutely do not come here if you have trouble with lots of steps. #3) This is marketed as a family/kid friendly resort but it’s really not. There were some fun activities in the more active pool, but there was really nothing else for the kids to do. The kids club was very small and geared to little ones. The teen room is lacking and only for 13-17, so our 12yr old couldn’t come/go on his own without being “signed in” for an hour. There is no real indoor family space to hang out in and play games together in case it rains. No art activities, very limited nightly entertainment, let alone anything really family friendly. This really felt more like an adult resort, #4) Power in entire resort went out for seemingly no reason the first day we arrived. All elevators, water, phones and electricity was down for hours. We had no AC until the following day. No communication from resort, no apologies, no assistance. Thank goodness we had a fantastic Airbnb management company to help us. #5) Only 2 hot tubs in entire resort and one was down the entire length of our stay, so the only other one was overrun with kids for the entire week. #6) We only saw a waitress one time at the pool the entire week we were there. Never saw anyone else and they never cleaned up cups/plates/trash at pool. By end of day, pool area was disgusting with trash. Again, it was still a nice trip and beautiful property- and we loved everyone we met- but definitely not a resort we will do again. However, if you are just going for a beautiful view, eating at restaurants and chilling at the pool, you should like it.

Stayed in a 2 bedroom ocean front room with butlers, the rooms were very spacious. Our butlers Garon, Mr. G and Keen were very helpful. The steakhouse was our favourite place for dinner, everything else was mediocre. The food at the buffet was very repetitive. The resort was clean however there are on going renovations.

Wonderful stay with family in 2 bedroom suite. Positives: - generous room size - large pools - nice beach (with bonus kayaks available) - good selection restaurants (food was surprisingly decent for all inclusive), decent buffet - universally very friendly and professional staff Special thanks to: - Tackeisha who went above and beyond for us and helped our picky eating kids at meal time - kids club staff Iesha, Tracy Ann, Danica, Oryan, all excellent Some areas for improvement: - at the quieter of the 2 pools (not the one with the swim up bar), there were rarely servers coming by to offer snacks/drinks. Unsure if this was because it was off season, but it was disappointing - there was no cash machine on site. The nearest one was sister resort, 5-10 minutes walk. Not a big issue but annoying. I would have thought it's not difficult to get a cash machine at Jewel Grande too. - the selection of fruits at the breakfast buffet was disappointing. Some days they had nice surprises like sweetsop, but most days it was just melon and mango of poor quality. I've been to other hotels in Caribbean where they have much more variety of tropical fruit, and more consistently good quality. Things like papaya, passion fruit etc. - I'm hoping it's fixed for good but we had several days with intermittent running water in our building and they kept having to fix the pump. - There were also some dangerous loose tiles on the edge of a few of the balconies that could fall off and hurt someone below which we reported and I hope they fix. Overall, we were very happy and would definitely consider returning, though I really hope they get the water pump fixed permanently as that was the main problem we experienced and the main reason I gave 4 stars instead of 5 (I think it may just have been localized to one part of one building, but still very annoying).