From George Fisette Managing Director @ The Cliff Hotel | Leading Integrated Marketing Strategies
Last weekend, in the third installment of The Future of Luxury Is Subtraction, I wrote about a question that increasingly influences the decisions we make at The Cliff. Can a hotel grow and still feel like less? Today, I can share some of what was behind that thinking.
This past week, The Cliff's parent company completed the acquisition of the neighboring waterfront property formerly known as Idle Awhile Cliffs. It is the third waterfront property we have acquired since 2025 and, importantly, all three are adjacent.
For the 2026/27 season, the newly acquired property will operate independently as Orchid Point Bungalows. [www.OrchidPointBungalows.com] The three oceanfront bungalows will continue welcoming guests while we take the time to determine what comes next. These decisions will influence this stretch of Negril's West End for decades, and there is no reason to rush them.
One lesson I have learned in hospitality is that a guest rarely cares how efficiently we have developed a piece of land. They care about how they feel when they are there. They notice whether breakfast feels hurried, whether they can find a quiet place by the water, whether someone remembers their name, and whether they can spend an afternoon doing absolutely nothing.
Those experiences require something increasingly valuable in the hotel business: space.
Our ownership group now controls four parcels in Negril totaling more than eight acres, with three waterfront properties sitting adjacent to one another. Local planning standards can permit densities as high as 30 guest rooms per acre, depending on zoning, use and approvals. Against that benchmark, more than eight acres could suggest development exceeding 240 habitable rooms.
Our vision is approximately 60 keys, roughly one quarter of that density benchmark.
To us, the difference is not unused development capacity. It is what we can give back to the guest. Its all about more distance between accommodations, more gardens, greater privacy around the pools and cliffs, more room for wellness, and more places where nothing needs to happen at all.
That is why our plans contemplate a new 7,000-square-foot, world class, wellness center rather than simply filling the acquired land with additional accommodations. Significant portions of the property will remain landscape, garden and open space. Orchid Point Bungalows will operate separately while we continue to learn, plan and refine the larger design.
The Cliff has already earned a place within several of the travel industry's most respected luxury networks. We are a Virtuoso member property, an InterNova SELECT hotel, a Fora partner property, and part of the Jamaica Tourist Board's Luxury Hotel Division. Each of those relationships brings its own standards and, more importantly, its own expectations from sophisticated travelers and the advisors who serve them.
Our next ambition is equally clear. We intend to strive toward becoming Negril's first Forbes Travel Guide Five-Star property. That will not be accomplished simply by adding buildings or rooms. It will be earned through the experience we create for our guests, the consistency of our service, attention to detail, the environment we create and, above all, the people who deliver it every day.
Our previously announced $20 million investment program is therefore not principally about making The Cliff larger. The acquisition, wellness center, new accommodations, gardens and the spaces we intentionally choose not to develop must all pass the same test. Does this make the guest's experience better?
That is where this acquisition connects to The Future of Luxury Is Subtraction. Growth does not have to mean putting more people into the same experience. We can add accommodations while maintaining ultra-low density, expand while creating greater privacy, and invest more while asking less of the guest.
For now, Orchid Point Bungalows begins its own chapter for the 2026/27 season while we continue designing what comes next. We have acquired more land, but our measure of success will not be how much we manage to put on it.
It will be how much better a guest feels because of what we choose not to build.