Jamaica’s environmental regulator has put a beach licence for the Grand Palladium expansion in Hanover on hold until the developer shows how it will relocate the coral and seagrass in the way of its marine works.
LUCEA, Jamaica, 20 October 2026, One of the largest hotel investments under way in Jamaica has hit a hurdle at the water’s edge. At its meeting on 15 September, the Natural Resources Conservation Authority (NRCA) deferred a beach licence application from Fiesta Jamaica Limited for marine works at the Grand Palladium at Point, Hanover, the Gleaner reported last week. Fiesta Jamaica is part of the Spanish-owned Palladium Hotel Group. The regulator wants to see a resource relocation plan first. The deferral is not a refusal, but the shoreline structures and the piles for the resort’s planned overwater suites need this licence, and they cannot go ahead until regulators accept the company’s plan for the coral and seagrass on the site.
What the regulator decided
According to the Gleaner, the NRCA gave one reason for holding the application back: it needs a resource relocation plan to review. The application stays open, and it can be approved once an acceptable plan is filed. No timeline was given. The licence sought covers three revetments, two submerged breakwaters, six groynes, two temporary access roads and the piles for the overwater suites, along with the removal of seagrass and coral. The Gleaner said it was awaiting replies from FINN, the group’s public relations firm.
Earlier approvals are already on record. Board decisions published by the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) show what a joint meeting of the NRCA and the Town and Country Planning Authority granted Fiesta Jamaica in November 2024, each approval with conditions. There was an environmental permit for a resort complex of between 501 and 1,000 rooms, and a separate environmental permit for overwater rooms. The meeting also gave outline planning permission for a 949-room hotel and a beach licence for one groyne, one revetment and one submerged breakwater. The application now on hold seeks a much larger set of shoreline structures than that first licence.
A big bet on the north-west coast
The expansion broke ground in February 2025 in the presence of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Tourism. The Jamaica Information Service reported that the project would add 950 rooms to the 1,054 already at the property, along with a convention centre for up to 1,000 guests. It put the cost at €500 million. Once complete, the resort would overtake the Bahia Principe Grand in St Ann as Jamaica’s largest hotel. PAX News, a travel trade publication, put the investment at more than €500 million and reported that 600 housing units would be built for hotel workers, which matters for housing in the parish.
The overwater rooms are a small part of the whole. The Gleaner, summarising details disclosed in 2024, described a 475-room family resort and a 473-room adult resort, some buildings rising to six storeys. The two resorts would sit on about 28 acres between the existing hotel and the Caribbean Molasses Company port, with 16 overwater rooms among them. The Gleaner noted that such rooms are among the highest-yielding products in the hotel business, so a handful of them carries more commercial weight than their number suggests. They are also the part of the scheme that reaches furthest into the sea.
Why the seabed is regulated separately
In Jamaica the beach and the sea floor are not simply extensions of the land behind them. NEPA’s guidance explains that under the Beach Control Act of 1956, commercial use of the foreshore and the floor of the sea requires a beach licence from the NRCA, with NEPA acting as the authority’s technical arm. That is why a project that already holds planning and environmental permits still needs separate approval before groynes are built or piles go into the seabed. As the Gleaner explained, revetments, groynes and breakwaters protect shorelines, but they also change how sediment moves along the coast, so their effects can reach beyond the structures themselves.
Overwater rooms have been contested before. When Sandals proposed overwater bungalows and villas near Providence Beach in Montego Bay, the Jamaica Beach Birthright Environmental Movement objected. The group said about 2.4 acres of crown waters would pass to a private company, residents would lose access to the beach, and coral, seagrass and fish nurseries would be put at risk. It argued that Jamaica has no law passed by Parliament on overwater structures, only a gazetted planning guideline. The Gleaner reported in April 2025 that the same project, 18 overwater bungalows and 10 villa suites at Sandals Montego Bay, had also drawn aviation safety concerns from the airport operator and ecological concerns from the Montego Bay Marine Park Trust. The Hanover case differs in its details, but it raises the same open question of how much of the sea a private development may occupy.
Investment and restraint
The decision comes at a sensitive time. As the Gleaner noted, Jamaica is working to rebuild hotel capacity lost to Hurricane Melissa, and a project of this size matters to that effort. Seen in that light, the deferral is a measured step rather than an obstacle. The regulator has not rejected the marine works. It has asked the developer to account for what it plans to remove before it removes it. Seagrass beds and reefs are widely recognised for holding sand in place and absorbing wave energy, so treating them as something to be managed rather than cleared is a reasonable expectation.
What to watch
The next move is the developer’s. Fiesta Jamaica now has to file a relocation plan, and how convincingly it shows that the coral and seagrass can be moved will decide how soon the licence is issued. For Hanover, the project still promises a much larger resort and new housing for its workers. For the wider property market, the episode shows that coastal approvals in Jamaica come in layers, granted body by body and structure by structure. A permit for the buildings does not guarantee a licence for the sea in front of them. Developers planning commercial waterfront projects should budget time for the marine works to be judged on their own terms.
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