OD for Negril Hotelier and Humanitarian, Paul Salmon

Popular Negril hotelier and humanitarian, Paul Anthony Salmon, is among more than 100 persons who will be honoured on National Heroes Day, Monday, October 18 for outstanding service to the country.

He will be presented with the Order of Distinction in the Rank of Commander, for contribution to the development and sustainability of Jamaica’s tourism industry for close to 30 years.

The 58-year-old is the Chairman of Jamaica’s award-winning 40-room boutique resort, the Rockhouse Hotel & Spa, located on the cliffs of Negril in Westmoreland.

He is also the Chairman of the Skylark Negril Beach Resort as well as the humanitarian organisation, Rockhouse Foundation, which supports educational projects.

Through his business and humanitarian initiatives, he has contributed to job creation, environmental protection, community development, and assisted the less fortunate.

“I am very honoured to be receiving the award and the acknowledgment,” Mr. Salmon tells JIS News.

“You work and try to have an impact to make a difference, and it is always great to be acknowledged for the effort that you put in. I feel very lucky to be able to build up a successful business here in Jamaica, to employ a big team and have an impact, and to be acknowledged for that is a great privilege and an honour,” he adds.

Born and raised in Melbourne, Australia, before moving to Sydney to work for an American bank, Mr. Salmon came to Jamaica in the late 1980s, following stints in Hong Kong, London, and New York.

He says he fell in love with the island and managed to gain a foothold in the local hotel industry when he purchased the then 12-room Rockhouse Hotel in 1994.

“From the beginning, we talked about what type of hotel we wanted to create, and the idea was to create a responsible hotel. We looked at how we could be responsible to our guests, our team, the environment and the community. We really started with the paradigm of these four corners of responsibilities and worked and expanded the hotel with that sort of ambition in mind,” Mr. Salmon outlines to JIS News.

From there, Rockhouse went about redefining the boutique resort concept and helped to transform the Negril area into one of Jamaica’s premier tourist destinations. It also did not hurt that Rockhouse was environmentally certified by Green Globe and EarthCheck throughout the decades.

“We only hire locals, so it’s a fully Jamaican team. They have been doing a tremendous job in providing hospitality to our guests,” Mr. Salmon notes.

“We have an amazing team here that we developed and give training opportunities. Our current general manager at Rockhouse joined us as a trainee over 20 years ago on the front desk and now has grown to be the general manager. In fact, many of our senior management team have been with the hotel for over a decade,” he adds.

Mr. Salmon’s emphasis on hiring locals from the community has never waned and he accredits Rockhouse’s success to this business practice.

The hotel has won various awards throughout the years, including being crowned the Caribbean’s leading boutique hotel six times. Furthermore, Rockhouse Hotel & Spa has been listed among the top-25 hotels in the Caribbean as well as being in the top-100 boutique hotels globally.

In addition to providing jobs to locals and developing the tourism product in Negril, Mr. Salmon is big on education, and in 2003 he established the Rockhouse Foundation to support such initiatives.

“Since then, we have been raising money each year and investing in community programmes focused on education in the local community. We raised over US$6 million to invest in local projects and taken on [several] schools and a local library. Our latest project has been the establishment of a youth school called the Savanna-la-Mar Inclusive Infant Academy in Westmoreland that focuses on kids with special needs alongside regular learning in an inclusive environment,” Mr. Salmon notes.

“We just recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to expand that Savanna-la-mar Inclusive School so it can go all the way through to high school. Right now, it goes from [pre-school] to second grade, but we’re going to add a class per year. We are going to expand the school so that as we graduate each year, we create a new grade,” he adds.

The Rockhouse Foundation’s other school projects are Moreland Hill Primary and Infant, Negril All-age, Negril Basic, Little Bay All-age and Infant, Bunch of Stars Early Childhood Institution, and the Sir Clifford Campbell Primary School. The Foundation also renovated and expanded the Negril Branch Library.

Mr. Salmon tells JIS News that his greatest fulfilment “is the work we have been able to do in the community and the thousands of kids we have been able to help get a better education”.

He notes that with the closure of schools due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the Foundation has continued to support the students through a food-distribution programme.

“Over the course of the last 18 months, since we started, we delivered over 200 tons of food into the communities,” he says.

Mr. Salmon, who is married and has three sons, enjoys biking, swimming and playing tennis.