Kingstown— With not enough air seats available, Sandals filled two massive airbuses — stylishly dubbed ‘Catamaran in the skies’ — to ferry hundreds of travel advisors to St Vincent and the Grenadines, home of its latest resort, for the return of the prestigious STAR Awards tonight.

What could have been a logistical nightmare moving two fully loaded charters totalling 360 persons on board, with an additional 130 persons on commercial flights, was made to look easy by the Sandals team headed by Dawn Bolte, senior director of travel industry sales at Unique Vacations Inc, affiliate of the worldwide representatives of Sandals and Beaches resorts.

Bolte said Sandals had never before done a STAR (Sandals Travel Advisor Recognition) Awards and a week-long Mega Fam (familiarisation) event simultaneously, necessitating the travel advisors coming in on charters out of Miami, and an additional 130 people on commercial flights into the almost virginal Eastern Caribbean territory on Monday.

“Tears came to my eyes when I saw the first of a long line of taxis roll up at the Argyle International Airport to take passengers to Sandals St Vincent 45 minutes away at Buccament Bay,” the modest Bolte confessed to the
Jamaica Observer. “It was really working.”

The last STAR Award, which honours the cream of the crop among travel advisors, was held five years ago, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, and Sandals was anxious that the event, the 19th annual, should return with a bang, said Gary C Sadler, the Jamaican executive vice-president for sales and industry relations at Miami-based UVI.

“From the brand’s inception, we have always recognised that travel advisors are the heartbeat of our industry. We not only express our sincerest gratitude for their unwavering commitment today, but every day,” said Sadler.

“We are proud to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the American Society of Travel Advisors (ASTA), the leading global advocate for travel advisors, in recognising their invaluable expertise and offering an extensive suite of tools to help travel advisors turn wanderlust into reality,” he added.

Sadler praised the “wonderful execution of the arrival process” and thanked the Ralph Gonsalves-led Government of St Vincent for pulling out all the stops to make the project a resounding success.

To execute the operation, Bolte explained, 50 members of the UV and Sandals Resorts International (SRI) staff from across the Caribbean were pulled together to help assist Global X, the charter company with greeting passengers and checking in their baggage at the Miami International Airport in Florida.

Once the bags were checked, passengers did not see them again until they got to their rooms at Sandals. On the receiving end in St Vincent, the resort staff welcomed the passengers and directed them to taxis.

Saying the whole thing went seamlessly, Bolte thanked the local police for providing escorts from the airport to ensure hassle-free movement, and the immigration and custom agents who travelled on the airplanes to expedite passport clearance.

“The arriving persons deplaned and boarded their transport right there on the tarmac, bypassing the usual lines at immigration and customs. The passports were collected right there and returned to the holders later at the hotel,” Bolte outlined.

What staff and other persons at the Argyle International Airport would not have known was that the merriment had started in earnest on the charters. Party music, mainly Jamaican reggae, was pumping throughout, the drinks were flowing as passengers played resort games led by the staff and laughed at each other’s antics.

When the pilot announced it was time to descend, everything was back in place as for a normal landing: the music went off; trash was picked up; seats were upright and everyone was back in their allotted seats, topped off by a near-perfect landing.

“We could feel the excitement and energy of the guests when they came off the plane and entered the resort,” commented Bolte.

Last night’s midweek entertainment had Jamaica’s reggae star Tarrus Riley on show. Tonight’s STAR Awards will feature a special welcome by Adam Stewart for the first time in his capacity of SRI executive chairman, after taking the helm of the resort chain in 2021 upon the passing of his dad, Gordon “Butch” Stewart.

The event ends on Saturday.