by Eric Bowman
Last updated: 2:10 PM ET, Mon December 8, 2025
Sandals Resorts has officially reopened five of the eight properties in Jamaica.
To celebrate the return of tourism following Hurricane Melissa, Sandals Resorts hosted a “Back to Jamaica” event at Sandals Dunn’s River with nearly 400 travel partners.
I caught up with Adam Stewart, Executive Chairman of Sandals Resorts International, to find out how the brand managed the storm, how it’s bouncing back, and future expansion projects for Sandals and Beaches Resorts.
Full interview transcript:
Eric Bowman:Hey everyone. I'm Eric Bowman, Editor-in-Chief for TravelPulse.com, here with the Adam Stewart, the Executive Chairman for Sandals Resorts International.
Adam, thank you so much for having us here. And also, congratulations to you and your team for winning the best hotel chain, all-inclusive for the Travvy Awards last month.
Adam Stewart:Thank you very much, man. Thanks for the recognition and you know, we love you guys. Can’t do it without you.
EB: We are here for the back to Jamaica events for sandals putting on post Hurricane Melissa here. So can you just talk about this initiative here and hosting nearly 300 travel advisors and how your team was able to put this on in like two weeks?
AS: Absolutely. You know, Jamaica has experienced one of the, the most difficult natural tragedies that we've ever had on history.
The largest named storm most powerful winds and. It was very difficult for parts of Jamaica. What we felt was really important was to get everyone here seeing is believing, seeing for yourself. As I look out the window here, you know, there are dozens of people in the pool. The sun is shining, the landscaping is phenomenal, and of course as business operators, we're all gonna stand up and we're gonna say everything is fine. But I think generally there's a residue on people's minds that believe that it may be worse than we're seeing. So, we felt the most important thing to do was to come back together and spend a few days here in Jamaica.
We reopened the five of our eight hotels in Jamaica tomorrow (December 6). And we've had the most phenomenal morning. The spirit of Jamaica is alive. The people are ready. The connectivity between the airports and the farmers and the fishers and the transportation sector and the tour providers and the whole ecosystem.
It was said earlier that by January about 80% of Jamaica's rooms will be back on track, and clearly you can see the five of the eight hotels that we're reopening are literally perfect. In fact, in many instances, better than they were before, because we've taken the last 30 days to just go through them and change roofs, spruce them up.
And, you know, parts of Jamaica just weren't affected. So about 75% of the country was literally unaffected by this storm itself. And that's, that's not what the consumer mindset may be thinking, and we wanted to prove that that was not the case.
EB: Yeah, seeing is believing. So there's a lot of travel advisors here are gonna be enticing their clients to come down for sure. Some great excursions that people were experiencing this week. And in the town hall here and the welcome event, it was really big. And I know they're setting up now for a great big party that we're gonna have later tonight. So you mentioned, you know, the five hotels opening up December 6th here. So can you just talk about kind of the status of those because it was pretty interesting. This, we're at Sandals Duns River right now, and they mentioned that three weeks ago this could have been open, this could have been fine, but you guys chose not to. Can you talk a little bit about that and the status of the others?
AS: Yeah, absolutely. So Jamaica's 152 miles wide, the storm was 10 miles wide. The hurricane forest winds are 30 miles wide and it came through the south of Jamaica. Montego Bay got a pretty good hit. Negril was pretty much unaffected. Some trees down, Jamaica's a botanical wonderland, so trees down, the same in Ocho Rios, even less.Kingston is fine. Port Antonio is fine. It's a bit of shrubbery down, but nothing structural, nothing major. The government of Jamaica has been just phenomenal, restoring and working with our power company and our utility companies getting water back and reopening the economy, in a textbook way.
It's been awesome to be a part of it and to watch it all happen. So the five resorts that we have fully functional, a hundred percent of all services, all staff back, team members well taken care of. We kept all of our team members on payroll with full benefits. And for the three resorts that are closed: Sandals Montego Bay, Royal Caribbean, and Sandals South Coast. our number one priority are health and safety standards, and human life safety. So those resorts got hit hard enough where they weren't ready to be reopened. We are gonna do what Sandals does. We are not gonna waste a crisis. We're gonna Sandalize, take them to the next level, and when they reopen and come back to market, they'll be truly transformed to the absolute next level.
So all in all, tomorrow's a big day. December 6th, the reopening. We are reopening our resorts with 80 plus percent occupancy across the region, which shows the trust in the brand. It shows the confidence travel advisor community have put into us, and it just means the world that so many travel advisors got on a plane and in this moment to come to Jamaica to see it.
And we're well aware, we're well aware of the travel advisor community and the backbone that they have always had for our company and supporting us. And you know, we're a Jamaican company. I'm a sixth generation Jamaican, and we're incredibly proud to be able to say that Jamaica is open, it is ready for business, send your clients back and we'll work and grow ourselves out of this natural tragedy.
EB: So what lessons would you say that you've learned as a company through this and how that can project you guys forward?
AS: You know, I think on a couple different levels, you know, in business it's really critically important to show up when you're needed. And, the Sandals team was bold. We took the right moves in the beginning. We made sure that a hundred percent of our customers that stayed in our hotels stayed free of cost for as long as they needed to. Those who couldn't get out. We charted a Dreamliner 777, flew them out of the country. We buckled down with our team members and did a multitude of programs to make sure team members were well taken care of.
We gave them pretty much 30 days off. Beause the hotels that weren't affected could have more or less opened within 10 days, maybe two weeks safely. So we've been reminded of the importance of leadership and showing up and standing by the ecosystem that makes it happen. And that ecosystem is your customer, it's your travel trade and it's your team members.
So nothing that we didn't really know before, but Sandals has been a bit of portrait in motion in playing its part here. We know we have the biggest brand. We're gonna use that brand to drive demand, to make sure airlift holds and that those who sell travel for a living and those of us who are blessed to work in this industry, you know, that we can keep moving forward. And, you know, the love that Jamaica has received from the United States and from Canada and from the UK and Canada again has really been amazing. Really been amazing. And we just wanna say a huge, huge thank you to everybody that stood by us.
EB: So in addition to sending all of their clients down here to come to Jamaica, how else can those tuning in, how can they help?
AS: Yeah. Look, I think we are past the stage of, or getting close to the stage of the donations. We've had almost a thousand relief flights of 767s, 737s coming from the US and Canada and the UK, and a lot of it from the United States. We're now in the stage of reopening our economy, our people want to get back to work.
We're excited about reopening our businesses and the number one way to help is literally choose consciously, to reopen Jamaica with us. Send your clients back here. You're not selling them a compromised product. The product that's open is in phenomenal shape. Tour providers are open, as I mentioned, and smiles have never been bigger and Jamaica's a country that just is Gratitude. We are so grateful for everything that the world does with us and for us, and, when you come home to Jamaica, you will feel that, I'm sure you felt it while you've been with us.
EB: Absolutely, yeah. As soon as I got out of the, the car here and I got welcomed with an amazing song and felt like I was serenaded, no one else was around me. I mean, there were, but it didn't feel like that. I felt home. I felt welcome. So, that's a little bit of here and the now. What can you tell us about the Sandals 2.0 in the future?
AD: Yeah, well, you know, the three hotels that we kept closed, Sandals Montego Bay, which is the first Sandals ever opened in 1981, it started as 99 bedrooms and then Sandals Royal Caribbean, our second hotel, and then Sandals South Coast, which which was our first new build sandals from the ground up. Those three hotels were damaged to the point that we decided to keep them closed. They're not devastated. Two out of the three have no structural damage, but cosmetically and certain life safety issues were too much of our concerns.
We've decided to keep those resorts closed and we are centralizing them. So 85% of Sandala Resorts anywhere in the world, Sandals or Beaches, were failed hotels that we acquired. Centralized Sandals means totally transforming them, putting out the pools and the additional restaurants, and expanding and making them, you know, what Sandals has become today.
So we are not gonna waste this crisis. We're gonna do the same thing with those three resorts, and I can't wait to share, in the early parts in next year, we'll start publishing renderings of the transformational work that will take place with those three resorts. And as we said earlier, really proud that. A hundred percent of the team members are of those resorts will remain on payroll and be taken care of by the company until the resorts reopen for arriving guests.
EB: That’s just incredible. And you guys definitely Sandaalize things as you can kind of see behind me right now is the old, what this hotel was and now it's really transformed.
AS: That’s Duns River 1950 there, back there.
EB: 2025 here, looks pretty sharp, I gotta say. So what about the Beaches expansion? You guys are pouring a lot of money into that and getting the families there.
AS: Yeah, man. So we said this morning, and I'll repeat here for our viewers that we just signed after quite a length negotiation with the government of The Bahamas. And I wanna thank the government of The Bahamas for beaches Exuma. We will start the tenders and development process in Q1 2026. That will be a boutique product that will focus on nature and the outdoors and the Exuma, the a hundred miles of the Exuma chain, and the swimming pigs and private and bespoke experiences, 500 acres Greg Norman Championship golf course. We have started construction already of the newest Beaches, which would be Beaches Barbados. That is a 600 room, 1.2 million square foot, absolute class family product, waterpark, integrated into rooms, and every feature and amenity we've ever designed, it'll be extraordinary.
Recently announced that we acquired 53 acres, three miles away from Sandals St. Vincent and the Grenadines to build Beaches St. Vincent, and just down the road here in Jamaica, probably in Q3. Stay tuned for more finer details. We will start construction of the latest Beaches in Jamaica, which will be called Beaches Runaway Bay, four 50 rooms, 18 hole championship golf course.
Everything that you can expect of Sandals Brand standards today will be built into Beaches Runaway Bay.
EB: Awesome. A lot of exciting things coming up for Sandals and Beaches. Adam, thank you so much for having us here. Just in the closing, what would you like to say to all our travel advisors tuning in?
AS: I just wanna say a huge thank you. The travel advisor community has been with us from. Every crisis, every good time, every bad time. And together we've powered through, and we will continue to be the great company that we are. Send us your business. Send Jamaica your business. Help us grow and earn a way out of this challenge that we have.It's a short-term blip and we love you guys and you've been amazing, and we're gonna do it together.
EB: This has been Eric Bowman for TravelPulse, and thank you so much, Adam Stewart.
AS: Appreciate it.
EB: This has been TravelPulse On Location. Until next time.
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