Looking for Black-owned, all-inclusive luxury? Spice Island Beach Resort is setting a new standard
In an exclusive interview with theGrio, Janelle Hopkin, president and managing director of Spice Island Beach Resort, discusses expanding her father’s hospitality legacy and what makes the five-diamond resort such a popular and exclusive destination in Grenada and the Caribbean overall.
Janelle Hopkin knows her father would be proud.
Sir Royston Hopkin was a larger-than-life figure who had been knighted by the Queen of England, yet still managed to make her scrambled eggs for breakfast daily, keeping in touch with people around the world as well as his home island of Grenada, West Indies, a small island north of Trinidad and Tobago and just a five-hour flight from New York City.
It was Sir Hopkin who had a vision of building a gorgeous luxury resort along Grenada’s critically acclaimed Grande Anse Beach, known as Spice Island Beach Resort. It started in 1987 when he bought a run-down resort with 20 rooms and worked year after year to expand it to 64 luxury villas. The son of parents who owned a motel, hospitality ran in his blood.
While back in his day, he’d occasionally run into a guest or businessperson who was surprised to see a young Black man leading such a grand project, his youth or race was never an obstacle. In Grenada, Black entrepreneurship was as common as the nutmeg that grew on trees around the island. Anyone caught off guard simply had catching up to do.
“Even when he bought spice in the day at the Beach resort, people said, ‘You’re crazy to buy a run-down beach resort. Nobody wants to go there.’ But he took it, and he made it into his baby. He made a beach resort, modern and chic,” Hopkin told theGrio of her father during an exclusive interview at the resort.
“He traveled a lot, and he saw things,” she recalls. He would always come back from a trip and have an idea. He wanted to push the novel. When everyone said, ‘We can’t do it, it’s fine how it is.’ He said, ‘What do you mean I can’t do it because I’m in Grenada?’ He loved his country. He wanted to inspire Grenada and an affinity for Grenada in the hearts of his guests.
And so Sir Hopkin lived his dream daily, running Spice Island with his wife by his side and his two daughters watching his every move—including his youngest, Janelle, who asked to learn the business and earned her way up from washing dishes in the kitchen all the way to the front desk. Eventually, Spice Island Beach Resort would grow in stature and fame, earning a AAA five-diamond rating and welcoming guests such as Prince Harry.
Before her father got sick and passed away in 2020, Hopkin accepted the reality that one day she might have to manage the family business full-time—but her father made it clear he trusted her vision to take it to the next level.
“The one thing he did say to me when he was in the hospital—I told him, ‘You’re going into surgery and you haven’t shown me anything, what you do all day.’ And he was like, ‘Because I’ve put you in the position where I know that you’re going to do it your way,’” Hopkin told theGrio in an interview at Spice Island. “Even if I showed you X and Y, when it’s your time and you step into those shoes, you’re going to do Y and X.”
Sir Hopkin was right. Now with the title of president and managing director, Janelle Hopkin bravely pushed forward to manage the well-oiled machine of Spice Island Beach Resort. In addition to its 64 luxury villas, the resort offers a combination of built-in pools, patios, and beachside balconies, plus delicious all-day dining and drinks with a custom menu prepared by their chef that can be served at your bedside or beachside.
The resort, which theGrio reviewed in person through the Grenada Tourism Authority, features stunning flower and tree arrangements throughout the grounds, providing a perfect balance between privacy and community.
With a top-rated spa, a complete fitness center with yoga classes, a bar-side pool, and two restaurants, Hopkin says Spice Island Beach Resort’s grounds are designed to have everything guests need in one place.
“I had a lot of noise after my dad passed. He was a larger-than-life experienced hotelier, and he left me a well-oiled engine,” Hopkin told theGrio. “So everything I tried to do in the beginning, people all over the region, all over the world, called me to say, ‘Don’t change it.’
“But I had to push forward and ignore the noise. If you love what you do, you can’t just keep doing the same thing every day—you have to think bigger.”
And think bigger she did. Just in time for Grenada’s 50th independence anniversary celebration, Hopkin also renovated portions of the beachside deck where hotel guests lounged, enjoyed their weekly Sunday BBQ buffet, and listened to live steelpan music, bringing in a modern vibe.
She has also been intentional about donating to schools, hiring locally, and training new generations of Grenadians to thrive in the hospitality industry, which has become increasingly dominated by corporate brands coming into Caribbean islands to stake their claim.
“I go to speak [to students] and let them know, studying tourism and hospitality is not serving coffee and cleaning rooms. You can actually get this high in your career,” Hopkin says.
“I honestly do believe in hiring local staff from all levels. You go to a lot of resorts in the Caribbean and a lot of the senior management are not local,” she explains. “A lot of my team have grown up here. A lot of them are women. They’ve started off as receptionists… It takes a lot more time, a lot more training. But that in itself is giving back to the island in general.”
While Spice Island is Black-owned, its clientele comes from all over the world to experience the luxury accommodations, and a quick scan of the crowd on a winter week shows a diverse mix of guests, including some 30-somethings, but mostly older European couples on holiday from the cold, relaxing in private cabanas.
But Hopkin has also met quite a few Black American tourists visiting Spice, moved by her family’s inspiring story and the Black-owned origins of the resort. Most recently, she ran into a couple from Chicago who had to experience Spice Island for themselves.
“I introduced myself and they said, ‘We’re here because we saw you on a Black-owned one of these YouTube things,’” Hopkin tells theGrio. “And I said, ‘Where are you traveling from?’ And they said, ‘Chicago.’ And I said, ‘Wow, you really want to be here to have to go through Miami or Charlotte to get here and travel for a day and a half, get up at 3 a.m. in the morning!’”
Stories like that affirm to Janelle Hopkin that not only is she keeping her father’s legacy alive through Spice Island Beach Resort, but she’s expanding it to reach more people eager to be served.
Now her legacy is one that also builds on the leadership of Black women in the Caribbean who’ve shown they have what it takes to be bosses, leaders, innovators, and more. As a mother to a young son and an executive always on the go, Hopkin is climbing many mountains at once—but much like her father, who charted new territory with grace and whose portrait is one of the first things to greet guests in the Spice Island Beach Resort lobby—Hopkin is learning her own lessons about the rules of success and applying them in real-time:
“You have to sacrifice,” she tells theGrio. “You have to work at it. You’ve got to dedicate everything you have and put all into it, especially if you love it. You’re not going to get there if you continue doing the same thing every day. You’ve got to look forward, which is what I’m trying to do now with the team at Spice.”
Read more stories from our series on the island of Grenada below:
