Ask ten travel writers where the all-inclusive resort began and you’ll probably hear, “Club Med in Europe.” Ask a Jamaican, and you’ll get a very different story. Our version runs through Port Antonio and Ocho Rios, through great houses and sugar estates, through a Kingston businessman called Abe Issa and a cove in Portland that once included helicopter time in the weekly rate.
When you zoom out, it becomes clear: Jamaica didn’t just copy the all-inclusive idea. Jamaica reinvented it, grounded it in our coastline and culture, then exported that model to the world. And that story is impossible to tell without talking about land – who owned it, who was locked out, and how tourism turned beachfront property into the most coveted real estate on the island.
