Montego Bay

Jamaica's "vibes city," Mobay has been the principal hub of the island's tourism industry since the 1950s, with the country's most well-heeled duty-free shops and beaches. The close proximity of the area's hotels to the Montego Bay airport makes it a convenient destination for long-weekenders visiting from the United States and those looking to take advantage of the proximity of destinations on the western side of the island. Sangster International Airport receives most of Jamaica's three million annual tourists, and the surrounding region offers plenty of activities for day trips out of town, making the Mobay area the most popular place for visitors to Jamaica to find lodging. But the picture is not entirely pretty, and plenty of strife plagues the city, not least of which derives from growing squatter communities in and around town. Many visitors find in Montegonians, also known as "bawn a bays," a hard-edged, matter-of-fact idiosyncrasy that reflects the dual worlds coexisting in the energetic city. Perhaps a tumultuous history kept fresh by perpetuating injustices leads the city's inhabitants to despise the subservience inherent in a tourism-based economy out of pride, even if it is tourism that sustains the town. Montego Bay has been at the center of the island's economic picture since the days of the Spanish, and it is not lost on the local population that the city remains an economic powerhouse with its booming service economy.

Old timers recall the golden years of 1960s Mobay, when clubs like the Yellow Bird on Church Street, Club 35 on Union Street, and Cats Corner were brimming with tourists and locals alike. Taxis would carry guests from the hotels to the city center, where they would await patrons into the early morning hours to emerge from smoky cabarets bursting with live music. The Michael Manley era, which began in 1972, ushered in a socialism scare that destabilized Jamaica, affecting the tourism market directly with travel advisories warning would-be visitors to stay away. Nowhere was the impact more severe than in Montego Bay, which was the most-developed resort destination in Jamaica at the time. It was during the 1970s that all-inclusive tourism became a phenomenon, and gated resorts became the norm. The overwhelming dominance of all-inclusive hotels in recent years has led fewer visitors to leave the hotel compounds to explore the city, stifling business for restaurants and bars, the more successful of which cater as much to the local market as to tourists. Today Mobay comes alive on certain nights of the week and gets especially lively for several notable annual festivals, like Jazz and Blues Festival and Reggae Sumfest.

Commercially Montego Bay is organized like many U.S. cities. Large shopping centers dot the urban landscape, with KFC and Burger King dominating two strong poles of the quasi-modern city--only quasi-modern because Mobay contains in a small space some of Jamaica's roughest areas (there have been weeks in recent memory that saw several police-inflicted killings in some of Mobay's worse districts). But along Mobay's Hip Strip in the vicinity of Doctors Cave, Cornwall, and Dead End Beaches, the mood is as outwardly genteel as during the early British colonial period.

Mobay has been crucial to the island since the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores. The name Montego is said to have its origin in the Spanish word manteca (lard), referring to the use of the bay as an export center for wild hog products, namely lard. The city was previously named Golfo de Buen Tiempo (Bay of Good Weather) by Christopher Columbus.