A Montego Bay Hotel Was Named Best in the Caribbean Months After Melissa Hit

• S Hotel Montego Bay ranked #1 all-inclusive in the Caribbean
• Sunset at the Palms, Negril, ranked #4
• The award came amid ongoing Melissa recovery
• Voting reflected real traveller trust, not just industry judging

S Hotel Montego Bay was named the number one all-inclusive resort in the Caribbean in the 2026 USA Today Readers’ Choice Awards, with Sunset at the Palms in Negril placing fourth, a result industry figures framed as a genuine affirmation of destination Jamaica arriving in the middle of the tourism sector’s ongoing disruption from Hurricane Melissa. The awards are based on nominations from travel experts followed by open public voting, making the ranking a reflection of actual traveller trust and satisfaction rather than an industry insiders’ judgment alone.

S Hotel CEO Christopher Issa tied the recognition directly to the storm rather than treating it as incidental timing. After everything the country and the tourism industry have faced following Hurricane Melissa, to be named number one in the Caribbean is a powerful statement about our resilience, our people, and the strength of Brand Jamaica, he said. It tells the world that Jamaica remains open, exceptional, and capable of delivering world-class experiences. He credited the hotel’s own team for maintaining service standards despite the broader sector disruption around them.

The award landed against a hotel sector this publication has covered as genuinely uneven in its post-Melissa recovery, some properties reopening within months, others, like Hyatt’s portfolio, facing repeated timeline delays. S Hotel Montego Bay, located on Jimmy Cliff Boulevard in the heart of the city, is a contemporary, adults-only property known specifically for its modern Caribbean design and culinary programme, the kind of boutique positioning that competes on guest experience rather than scale against the island’s larger all-inclusive chains.

For a destination working to rebuild both physical infrastructure and international traveller confidence simultaneously, an independently voted award landing in the same period as active recovery efforts functions as evidence for a claim the industry has been making anyway: that Jamaica’s tourism product itself remained intact even where individual properties, and the storm damage behind them, had not yet fully recovered.