Gran Bahia Principe Jamaica Rating: 3.5 Pearls

Runaway Bay, Jamaica

Guests play volleyball in the resort's pool

From afar, the Gran Bahia Principe looks like a whitewashed castle with clay-roofed gables. The gargantuan, U-shaped complex looks out over the serpentine pool and the beach. Well-manicured paths crisscross in every direction to the various restaurants and the waterfront, though the hub of social activity centers on the ocean-view terrace outside the second-floor lobby.

Even in mid-March, when most of Jamaica is bouncing with spring breakers, the vibe is pretty mellow. The resort draws mostly families, but there are a good number of mature couples as well. And yet this is one of the few hotels in Jamaica with a nude beach!

The majority of the resort's guests are Canadian, though it gets many European guests in the summer. Management explained that the hotel doesn't get many American guests, particularly since the recession began in 2008.

Even with a late-night disco and an all-night karaoke bar on the premises, most guests seemed to go back to their rooms once the band stopped playing at around 11 p.m. I met a 30-something man from Edmonton who was disappointed with the resort's singles scene, and furthermore resented that the closest nightlife was half an hour away in Ocho Rios (though there is a free shuttle from the resort to Ocho Rios a few nights a week).

A chef shows resort guest how to play with fire

A bellhop sang to me, a bartender raised a glass to toast my trip, and a friendly hostess squeezed me into a private room at an a la carte restaurant at a moment's notice. As at many Jamaican resorts, the staff here greatly enhanced my experience.

Check-in was smooth enough (I just beat a tour bus full of Quebecois), although my room wasn't quite ready when I arrived at around 1:30 p.m. The clerk gave me a map, circled the buffet restaurant, and gave me directions there. Fortunately, when I returned a little after 3 p.m. I was good to go, and was handed a packet containing a map, a room key, and a towel card. I went to the bell stand where I had stashed my bags, but suddenly it was a ghost town. After a few minutes I decided I could handle my own bags, and I went up to the front desk to ask for directions to my room.

On the way, a bellman stopped me and insisted on loading my bags onto his cart. As I made my way down the hall, I noticed him stop to pick up a piece of glass off the floor and put it in the trash -- good attention to detail.

When I got to my room, the bellman observed that the electricity wasn't staying on. (The hotel uses one of those cards that slides into a slot in the door.) He suggested that I call the front desk, which I did. It took two tries to connect, since the first operator didn't speak much English and connected me to the calling-card company instead. The second call worked, and an electrician was knocking on the door 10 minutes later to fix the problem (which he did). "Now it will never go off, mon," he told me cheerfully as he took his leave.

Countless bartenders, groundskeepers, and lifeguards greeted me with a big smile and a friendly handshake. (One lifeguard also offered me some herbal refreshment, and a couple of the resort's staff photographers invited me to hit up a local dance club.) This isn't necessarily reflective of some Gran Bahia management ethos -- more likely it's just the Jamaican way -- but either way I generally felt welcome and at ease interacting with the resort's staff. Some guests felt like the staff (especially the male staff members towards female guests) could be a little too friendly, to the point of making guests feel uncomfortable, but I never experienced this.

Making a dinner reservation can be a hassle. The welcome book explains that guests can call a certain phone extension to make a reservation until 6 p.m. I called at around 5 p.m., and the woman I spoke with gave me an 8 p.m. reservation at the Garden Grill. She said I should pick up my ticket at the public relations desk in the lobby. When I showed up at the lobby, the woman at the desk said there was no record of a reservation and no ticket had been left for me. "You're not even allowed to make reservations over the phone, so I don't know what she was talking about," she told me. Fortunately, at the sushi and teppanyaki restaurant, Mikado, the hostess was more accommodating and squeezed me into a table. The next morning, I showed up at around 10:15 to make a dinner reservation (the desk is open from 10 to 6). I waited in line for about 20 minutes, but was able to secure one at my desired restaurant and time.

Gran Bahia has a program known as Club Golden Principe that entitles guests to perks like 24-hour room service, free Internet use, private check-in, and turndown service. For some guests, the upgrade will be well worth it, as it means that they can check in on the bus from the airport rather than wait in a long line at the front desk, and have unlimited beach towels delivered to their room rather than deal with the towel carts.

View on a Larger Map

Because it's along a busy one-lane highway, Gran Bahia Principe isn't really within walking distance of anything. The shops and banks in the town center are only a few minutes' drive away. Most guests who choose to go to outside clubs make the 30-minute trip to Ocho Rios.

The beach

The water is clear and warm, but the beach was filled with pebbles and the sand seemed to have been built on top of a cement block. Ocho Rios generally has better beaches, and none of these compare to the seven-mile beach in Negril.

The resort actually has three beaches. The snorkeling beach is directly in front of the resort beyond the pool. It's surrounded by rock jetties, and beach chairs under thatched umbrellas dot the wide swath of sand.

The main swimming beach was off to the side of the resort, just past the Piscis Snack Bar. No guests complain about crowding on the beach, unlike at some mega-resorts, and it never looked overcrowded to me. Again, the water was nice, but the sand was filled with pebbles and didn't seem quite natural.

On the far western edge of the property -- and blocked off by a tall fence -- is the nude beach. (I passed on this adventure because I preferred to remain clothed.) The beach is apparently popular with the resort's European clientele; at one point, I saw a man reprimanded for lying naked on the snorkeling beach.

My pool-view room was on the western side of the property, making it about a five-minute walk from the swimming beach and five minutes to the lobby and restaurants. Rooms on the eastern side of the property (and the end of the very serpentine pool) would have been at least 10 minutes from the swimming beach, and in fact a lot of people complain about this on Trip Advisor.

The Junior Suite

All rooms include a sitting area, a wide balcony (overlooking either the pool or the ocean), and an enormous marble bathroom with separate Jacuzzi tub, a shower, and a private toilet area. The four-poster king bed had a partial canopy and dark wood headboard. The bed was fairly comfortable, but I constantly felt itchy and bothered by the stains on the sheets.

The room's worst feature was the old 20-inch Toshiba television, which hummed intermittently like a cricket whenever it was on. The TV received a decent amount of American channels -- including the Denver affiliates of all the major networks -- but it only sporadically got channels like HBO, Showtime, or ESPN.

The mini-bar came with free cans of soda, two small bottles of water, and two cans of beer. There was also an extensive coffee and tea station that included instant packets of Jamaica's famous Blue Mountain coffee.

Other features included an ironing board and an electronic safe, which costs an extra $6 per day to use. You may want to spend the extra cost, because guests have complained about items going missing from their rooms.

Water sports

The resort's large pool snakes around the entire beachfront of the resort. It has two kiddie pools, a number of bridges, in-water loungers, gradual-entry spots, two swim-up bars, and built-in Jacuzzis. It was extremely clean and so large that it never got crowded, but it seemed to be quite popular compared with the beach. Reviewers on Trip Advisor rightfully complain about problems with people "reserving" lounge chairs by the pool. I walked through the area at 8 a.m., and every chair in the sun was already covered with a towel. This is a pervasive problem at nearly every resort, but Gran Bahia seems to make especially little effort to enforce rules about reserving seats, and unfortunately there were only a limited amount of chairs to be found.

The gym is large enough and has pairs of bikes, treadmills, and ellipticals as well as free weights and a few other weight machines. An adjacent room has spinning bikes, exercise mats, and Reebok steps. But the rooms are brutally hot -- there's no A.C., no windows, and no fans.

The Renova Spa is clean, modern, and bright. It offers a standard assortment of treatments, ranging from facials and waxes to hair braiding and massages. Prices range from $13 (for a wax) to $146 (for a facial). Basic manicures and pedicures go for $20 and $29, respectively -- pretty good prices for a resort.

The resort also has two tennis courts and an on-site pro who is available to give free lessons. Equipment rental is also free.

An evening show

A unicylist rode around on stage to a Kenny G-style saxophone rendition of "I Will Always Love You" as part of Tuesday evening's "Bahia Pirates Beach Party." Nuff said. Every evening, the beach theater area gets packed to standing-room-only capacity; the shows typically close with two brief dances from the activities staff, and then guests are invited to fill up the dance floor. The house band was pretty good but mostly played standard wedding fare, not reggae.

Performers in these shows are members of the activities staff, who are also meant to lead games and sports during the day. I rarely saw anything from the schedule actually happen, save for some volleyball in the pool, and this is a fairly common complaint on Trip Advisor. Yes, loud music blasted from the towel hut in the pool area all day, but I didn't see any water aerobics, reggae dance classes, or other games.

On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays, the hotel provides a free shuttle to the club Margaritaville in Ocho Rios.

The kids' club

Judging by the kids I saw squealing with delight by the pool, and the kids I talked to about how much fun the mini-disco was, this seems to be a great place for families. The entertainment gravitated toward the tame -- 15 minutes of unicycling?! The hotel also features a large kids club which is open from 10 a.m. to 5p.m and is free for kids 4 to 12 (you'll have to pay a babysitting fee for children three and under.) Between the large kids club, the ginormous pool, and the sprawling beachfront, this definitely struck me as a place for families first and foremost.

The resort's public areas are stunning, particularly the enormous pool and the sprawling beachfront. Every restaurant I inspected was also quite clean. But in the rooms, there might be some faint stains on the sheets or a collection of scuff marks on the walls.

Preparing food at Don Pablo

The resort has one main buffet restaurant, Orchid, and four a la cartes: Mikado (Japanese), Garden Grill (steak and seafood), Don Pablo ("gourmet"), and Dolce Vita (Italian). All are centrally located around the main courtyard near the lobby and pool, and are all an easy walk from the rooms. Mikado is the most popular, and it features both sushi and a hibachi grill. But the alleged "gourmet" at Don Pablo is more about presentation than the food -- mushroom cappuccino, how cute!

The hotel has a policy that guests may only eat at three à la cartes per week, and Gold Club members always get their first pick of restaurants, so guests are bound to spend a lot of time at the buffet. Fortunately, it has a fairly wide variety of foods and great ocean views. The fruit selection is a bit smaller than most resorts, but the breakfast buffet is superb. In addition to the usual omelet stations, the Gran Bahia also has a waffle station, a crepe station, and fresh smoothies.

Perhaps the resort's most popular restaurant is its lunchtime jerk shack at the beach, within Piscis Snack Bar. It's only open from noon to 3 p.m., and when I showed up at around 12:30, the line was 10 people deep. The chicken was quite moist and tasty, and some guests claimed it rivaled the popular MoBay spot Scotchies (though it was considerably less spicy). The pork was also quite tasty and tender, but very fatty.

A welcome welcoming cocktail

Most of the alcohol was of the generic variety, save of course for Red Stripe beer on tap and Jamaica's famous Appleton rum. I also saw Stoli vodka available free of charge, though guests had to cough up a few dollars to "upgrade" to Absolut. Other name-brand liquors like Bailey's, Kahlua, and Cointreau are also available from the lobby bar for $2.50 and up.