EVERY year, without fail, some of the globe’s biggest tourism markets — read Florida, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, the Maldives, South Africa, among them — come to court Sandals Resorts, hoping to replicate the genius of this Jamaican-born, Caribbean brand.

In the face of such overwhelming flattery, it’s hard to be humble and resolute, but Adam Stewart, the young executive chairman of Sandals Resorts International (SRI), is nothing less. Thanks but no thanks, he says. Sandals will remain Jamaican and Caribbean, for now.

“It’s an amazing privilege…I think there’s no question the brand would thrive in other parts of the world…We’re just a bunch of Jamaicans and Caribbean people, doing what we love and doing what we perfected,” Stewart told Money Media’s Kalilah Reynolds in a wide-ranging interview.
Referring to the conglomerate’s global marketing campaign styled “Made of Caribbean”, he revealed that two years after his dad, the Sandals founder, Gordon “Butch” Stewart passed, the team looked deeply at the brand to be clear what was its essence.

“We turned over and looked at just about every part of the business and it brought us right back to these three words ‘Made of Caribbean’.
“We are powered by the 20,000 team members in our company. Ninety-eight per cent of them are Caribbean Community (Caricom) nationals. From top to bottom in the company, the leadership is Caribbean nationals.

“Our head of HR, for example, is from St Lucia, our head of sales is from Jamaica. Our head of weddings and celebrations is from Jamaica. I’m proud of the fact that we have some of the most powerful Jamaican women. I mean, you just look at the business across the board in the region, they are absolute champions overall,” Stewart said.

He told the interviewer that the entire organisation was sold on the idea that the brand could go further than the Caribbean, just based on how Sandals operates and the kind of conservative approach it takes in building the foundation.

But even at that, the executive chairman stressed the need for caution, saying: “You never want to dabble in a space that you’re not ready for. To be able to operate a hotel in the Maldives or Dubai or South Africa or Saudi Arabia or the Florida Keys, or any one of the places that we’ve been invited to, it’s absolutely possible to get there. But you got to build the foundation to make sure that you’re ready for it. So, do I believe we will get there one day? I do.”
The invitations to Sandals have generally come from the investment arm of the countries, or their equivalent of Jamaica’s Jampro. By invitation, Stewart meant to build Sandals resorts in those locations or to manage hotels under the Sandals brand.

“However, our work in the Caribbean is not yet done. We have seven resorts under development. We are working in The Bahamas and Jamaica. We just opened in Turks and Caicos. We have St Vincent and the Grenadines. We have Barbados. We have a new destination that if I say it here, I’ll be speaking out of turn,” he teased.

The SRI chief lights up when he describes the Caribbean, recalling that his father always said, ‘When the Almighty created the Caribbean, he spent just a little bit more time here than anywhere else in the world.’

“And if you go on Google Earth and you look down at the entire planet, the bluest sea, the greenest vegetation, whitest white sand beaches are in the Caribbean. We believe that it is God’s country and we believe the Caribbean has not come close to achieving her true and total potential.

“Still, I believe that if I said Sandals is investment grade tomorrow, in terms of wanting to have asset owners where we manage their resorts, which is how most of the hospitality industry is run, I think there would be a line all around New Kingston and back around.

“The world wants a piece of what Sandals has perfected and with that you have to pay attention to how that happened and the people of the business and the culture of the islands of the Caribbean. It’s a thing of great pride that it all started in Jamaica, which has always been our home base,” he said.
Stewart was insistent that the obstacle to going outside the Caribbean was neither capital nor know-how, but simply building the infrastructure and being ready.

“Ultimately, you know, we’re running a single balance sheet and I just listed a number of resorts that we’re developing at this moment in time, which is more than we have ever done. You don’t want to open too many resorts at one time. It dilutes what you’re doing. It disrupts the workforce overall.

“We are not in a race because we’re not listed [on the market]. We’re not in a race to have to grow and have quarterly earnings. We’re in a race to make sure that we are delivering the absolute highest standards, making sure that our people believe that they can achieve all of what they want in their lives by matriculating through the Sandals Corporate University and leading this company. We run it directly focused on the people of the business and the customers staying in the business,” he said.

Stewart pointed out that the hotel business is now in a generational shift, readying itself to respond to the changing needs of the market, as has been happening in other industries such as the automotive industry.

“You never want to be the company that your parents or your grandparents said was the rock star company in their day. You have to pivot and transition on the fly, and that’s coming through guest services in gastronomy.

“It’s coming in authenticity of service delivery. It’s coming in experiencing the things that we do. It’s everywhere where people are saying this is the wellness generation. People are consuming less alcohol than they did in the past.

“The gyms have to get bigger. The spas have to get bigger. The menus have to get more engineered. People are more concerned about ingredients and farm-to-table. When you’re dealing in a quality product, those are the drivers that customers are paying attention to,” he explained.

Stewart argued that the all-inclusive concept is not one thing but a multitude of different segments, with Sandals sitting at the very top in terms of guest services and quality.

“Our consumers have travelled the world and it’s a great privilege to be able to serve them in Jamaica and across the Caribbean, and for them to choose us instead of Paris, France or Zurich, Switzerland or Tokyo, Japan or anywhere else for that matter.
“They been there and they’ve done that,” he said.