Round Hill Travel Story

Round Hill Hotel & Villa’s Director

Round Hill Hotel and Villas, the ne plus ultra of resorts in Montego Bay, Jamaica, has a storied past. Part of a onetime sugar plantation, the hotel and private cottages opened in 1953, its first shareholder was Noel Coward. Adele Astaire, Fred’s sister and dance partner, owned one of Round Hill’s villas, Number 25, that was later used by John and Jackie Kennedy. JFK actually edited and rehearsed his presidential inauguration speech there, and parts of it are still displayed in the cottage. Oscar Hammerstein owned Villa 12 and met the real-life Maria Von Trapp there. He wrote The Sound of Music, as well as several other musicals, in the three-bedroom property. 

Angela Bassett, Whoopi Goldberg, and Taye Diggs lounged in the private pool while taking in the spectacular hillside views of the Caribbean from Villa 11, the set of the 1998 movie How Stella Got Her Groove Back. A few years later, Diggs and Idina Menzel had their wedding at Round Hill. I stayed in shoe designer Vanessa Noel’s perfectly appointed Villa 12 that also boasts some of the hotel’s best ocean views.

Prince Harry & Meghan Markle

Prince Harry debuted his romance with Meghan Markle at the resort in 2017 when the actress joined him for the wedding of his best friend Tom “Skippy” Inskip. The occasion marked her first introduction to Harry’s closest circle of friends. The couple stayed at Cottage 16, the same one in which author Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, stayed. The glamorous, ultra-private villa has six bedrooms, two pools, and stunning views of the Caribbean, with decor by Ralph Lauren. 

Ralph Lauren and his wife Ricky own two of the 27 villas on the lush 110-acre property. One, called High Rock, sits on the resort’s highest point: “We made the house what it should be,” Lauren said of the place he’s owned for more than thirty years. “It’s in the spirit of Round Hill—very quiet, very elegant.” The other, White Orchid, which they purchased in 1996, is down the hill, directly on the beach, and was once owned by William and Babe Paley.

Round Hill is the Lauren’s home from home; the couple visit regularly, along with their children and grandchildren. “We go there as often as we can escape,” said Ricky, who penned a book about Jamaica titled My Island. Ralph designed the 36 luxurious ocean-view guest rooms at The Pineapple House, the property’s main hotel.

Meet the Hotelier Josef Forstmayr

Josef Forstmayr, Round Hill’s popular managing director, has been at the helm of this elegant Caribbean oasis since 1989. He worked with Ralph Lauren on the resort’s most recent update in 2024 and loves Jamaica just as much as the fashion mogul does. 

In his office at Round Hill, Forstmayr has a glorious letter from Queen Elizabeth II, naming him Jamaica’s honorary Consul General for Austria. “The Queen bestowed the OD, or the Order of Distinction, on me, which I was able to accept having Jamaican citizenship,” Forstmayr said. “Being a Jamaican and an Austrian, I’m able to use it. That was a great honor. It was in recognition of the many years that I’ve worked in tourism, and also on behalf of the government of Austria.”

Among the many famous guests at Round Hill during his 35-year tenure, Forstmayr is especially fond of Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, and Sir Paul McCartney, who has been coming to the resort for many years. “All of Paul McCartney’s children grew up here: Stella, Mary, James, and Heather. They all used to spend every Christmas here, and he’s an incredible person,” said Forstmayr, who is currently the director of the Jamaica Tourist Board, sits on the Montego Bay Chamber of Commerce, and chairs the Montego Bay Arts Council.

After visiting Round Hill for decades, I finally sat down with Forstmayr to hear the story of how this Austrian, now also a Jamaican citizen, found his life’s work in this idyllic setting.

Hospitality in his Bones; Austria – U.S. – Jamaica

Forstmayr’s parents owned a farm and restaurant in a small town outside of Salzburg, Austria, and always encouraged the children to help out with the business. “Hospitality is part of what I always was brought up with, and it’s something I always wanted to do,” he said. After finishing college in Salzburg, his parents encouraged him to travel and see the world, so he decided to do postgraduate work at Cornell and its Statler Hotel.

When the program ended, a fellow student from a wealthy Jamaican family invited Forstmayr to visit the island, and he figured why not, and hopped on a plane. That was in 1979, and he’s been there ever since.

He stayed first at a beautiful hotel in Negril called Coconut Grove. It was owned by a stylish Jamaican man and his wealthy German wife. The place was highly successful, even though tourism was floundering in Jamaica at that time due to political upheaval, and they asked him to stay on as assistant manager. That hotel is now part of a larger, mass-market resort, but back then it was one of the great resorts on the island, celebrating the best of Jamaica, with Jamaican furnishings, Jamaican food, staff, and music. “We had the first reggae band that performed in a hotel. I mean, that didn’t exist in the early ’80s,” said Forstmayr.

He was hired away from Coconut Grove by Earl Levy, a Jamaican architect and visionary, for his hotel in Port Antonio called Trident Hotel. “That was one of the great small boutique hotels in the ’80s where we filmed many international movies like Cocktail and Clara’s Heart.”

Tom Cruise a Friend

Forstmayr met a lot of movie stars, some up and coming, like Tom Cruise who became a pal. Cruise came often with his first wife, Mimi Rogers. “I met them when he had just gotten married; he had just finished the movie Risky Business, which hadn’t been released yet. He was with his beautiful redheaded wife, riding on a motorbike and came into my lobby at Trident.” The couple was incredibly beautiful, so he gave them a good rate on a room even though he didn’t know them at all. Now, years later, Forstmayr says he is very fond of the actor. “He’s an incredibly nice man, and also a very smart, very real guy.” As Cruise became extremely famous, Forstmayr drove him crazy, telling the actor that he needed more business in the summer months, could he shoot movies there. “He was the one that actually brought us Cocktail, his whole family stayed with me at Trident.”

When Cruise was at the peak of his success, after Top Gun, he told Forstmayr, “Josef, all this movie fame is nonsense. You’re only as good as your last film and you’re always searching for your next one.”

1989 to Round Hill

In 1989, Round Hill stole Forstmayr away, offering him what he felt was a great opportunity to rejuvenate the resort which had fallen on hard times. It was only open for four months out of the year, so it had missed out on new business from families. Its old audience was dying out, and they hadn’t invested in the physical place.

Exclusive & inclusive

Forstmayr took over on the 1st of October 1989 and was asked to open up all year long. In order to do that, he explained, he needed to create a new audience. “You have to make people feel that it’s not stuffy, that families will become comfortable here, that we will look after you. That it is very inclusive; it’s not just some very exclusive club that you can’t get into, because it did have that kind of personality.”

Now, he said, the resort’s feel is much warmer. “We want to be exclusive, but we don’t want to be excluding anyone. And I think we’ve been able to do that by becoming a real great resort for children, for Black guests, for gay guests. And Jamaica doesn’t have a great reputation that way.”

In fact, Forstmayr is gay and married to a Jamaican man, and says he has never experienced any kind of marginalization on the island. The two have been together since 1999 and married in Austria in 2014. “I keep pushing the love as much as I can. And I must say, I give Jamaica full credit. I have never suffered in any way.” He is proudly gay, and has never held back, and always stood up for his beliefs. “I guess my upbringing helped me, because it never mattered to me, actually, I didn’t define myself by my sexuality, so that made my life a lot easier in many ways.” He added that he has great respect for his Jamaican husband, who is from a poor family but grew up with tremendous love from his father. “It shows you that a strong, positive father figure who is accepting of you is incredibly important in a man’s life. And that was what made Richard so strong.”

Round Hill Staff: Secret Sauce

The ratio of staff to guests at Round Hill is one-to-one. The property has altogether 130 rooms with two beds, so 260 beds and a minimum of 260 staff are on duty. When the hotel

is full, they bring on extra staff, up to 300. And Forstmayr believes it’s the people that make the place unique. “I refer to our staff as our secret sauce,” he said. The people that work there are proud, many have history with it; some workers are second and third generation, so their grandparents helped to build it. “So they have a real investment in this. They create loyalty and they make it possible to really get the feel that this is something that is special.”

This level of service and privacy is what the famous guests treasure about spending time at Round Hill. Harry and Meghan stayed in Villa 16, a six-bedroom house complete with highly discreet staff – if you want them. The private chef will prepare gourmet meals, you don’t need to lift a finger during your visit, but if you’d prefer to show off your own culinary skills, the magnificent kitchen is at your disposal.

A Place Apart: Understated Luxury, Warm Jamaican Heart

Noting that Jamaica has developed so much over the years, and there are so many more resorts competing on the island now, the original mission that he established when he came on board is what sets Round Hill apart.

“I’m a great believer that you focus on the things that you are and that you do well where you are. That’s really important to me.” said Forstmayr. “We created this mission statement many, many, many years ago, which is timeless elegance, understated luxury, warm Jamaican heart. Whatever we do, be it improvements in your accommodations, in your services, in your locally produced foods from our organic garden, your local farmers, the local fishermen, we always try to live up to that mission,” he added. “And when you do that and you do it as good as you can, the guests will appreciate it and it will set you apart. You never ever have to copy what anybody else does. You just need to do whatever you can do better and make it more relevant.”

Sugar Cane Ball

An annual highlight at Round Hill is the Sugar Cane Ball, a charity gala held each February to benefit the Hanover Charities. The charity provides support to local schools, shelters, kitchens and health care, and awards scholarships.

It celebrates the harvesting of the sugar cane, which took place in February, and the charity is linked to the founding of Round Hill. When the sugar was being produced, everybody was working a lot and everybody got more money, but yet there was still a lot of need as well. So John Pringle, the property’s original owner, decided to host a ball once a year where all his rich friends and guests could donate lots of money for good causes for the region.

“For our parish, we focus on the young and the old, the Noel Holmes Hospital in Lucea, the soup kitchen in Lucea, orphanages and old people’s homes,” Forstmayr said. They also grant over 170 tertiary scholarships for young Jamaican male and female students from the parish to study at universities.

This long-held tradition, the Sugar Cane Ball, was another thing that Forstmayr was determined to revitalize when he took over the resort. “I remember when I first came I had a really hard time putting on the Sugar Cane Ball where I wanted people to dress up in black tie and white dinner jackets, and to really create that 1950s-’60s vibe. It was hard because people were so informal.” However, he and his team were eventually able to recreate that magic and make it fun again.

“The exciting thing is that the new generation is just as eager to celebrate what their grandparents had. And now you go in February to our biggest Sugar Cane Ball or any other Saturday night, and you have a lot of young people that are dressed to the nines. They’re celebrating and they’re having a blast. And it’s so rewarding to see that.”

Last February the evening raised $880,000 net for charity, after expenses. “We are the largest charitable organization in Western Jamaica, and we have been around for now almost 69 years.”

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