How Sandals – and its ebullient founder – reinvented holidays in the Caribbean
Such was the familiarity of the Godfather of Jamaican and Caribbean tourism that everyone simply called him ‘Butch’. Gordon ‘Butch’ Stewart, who died on January 4, was an affable man, ebullient and immensely energetic, a giant in the tourism industry who would talk to anyone. He was a salesman and a great communicator, for his businesses and for Jamaica, and his influence stretched throughout the Caribbean and beyond.
Butch Stewart had humble beginnings, raised on Jamaica’s north coast, but he was an entrepreneur from the start, and caught the wave of several Caribbean industries. In the 1960s he set up his first company, distributing and servicing air conditioners, then becoming popular on the island. This carried him through the Seventies, a difficult political and economic period in Jamaica, and his success and energy left him poised to ride the Caribbean wave of mass tourism in the Eighties. In 1981 he bought a tired hotel in Montego Bay and re-opened it as a Sandals resort.
His vision was clear – to bring back Caribbean romance for a new generation of tourists; time for couples to enjoy without children shrieking at the poolside, nor the holiday camp air of a singles club. He was obsessive about service (then not an easy thing in the Caribbean), but his key innovation was to make his hotels all-inclusive, in which everything, from food and alcohol to watersports, was included. It freed guests of money concerns and his staff from nightly accounting rounds. His line was that “Sandals didn’t invent the all-inclusive, but we perfected it”.
The formula was not without controversy. To begin with the hotels felt a bit formulaic, but the main criticism was that all-inclusives corralled guests inside the resort and discouraged them from leaving the premises, making it hard for independent businesses to survive (there are still woefully few good independent restaurants on the north coast of Jamaica).
But Butch’s vision was far broader than the hotel business. He helped to drive the development of the underlying infrastructure of the Jamaican hospitality industry itself. He had a hand in staff training and the supply chain for food, transport and building materials (by now his company ATL had expanded into many technical services beyond air-conditioning). He was twice a director of the Jamaica Tourist Board and was Air Jamaica’s Chairman for a decade from 1994. The whole tourism industry in Jamaica benefitted, and independent hotel operator Paul Salmon of Skylark and Rock House Hotels in Negril remembers his influence as “the tide that floated everybody’s boats”.
Sandals became part of the success story of Jamaican tourism (in 2019 there were 2.7 million stay-over visitors to the island). Huge advertising budgets offered tantalising pictures of tropical beaches on London taxis and the Tube. The result was a new generation of visitors, helping to re-establish the island and the wider region in a more competitive global market. Sandals expanded, buying hotels around Jamaica and in time around the Caribbean – Antigua, the Bahamas, Grenada, Cuba, St Lucia, and St Kitts. There were 25 hotels within the group eventually.
If he was a disruptor, he was also an innovator – what could be more Caribbean than the ‘swim-up bar’, reputedly a Sandals’ first? And then he oversaw evolution. Beaches, an offshoot chain, offered a less expensive option for families and children, while Sandals itself stretched the formula at the top end, taking over some stalwarts of Jamaican tourism. Under the guidance of daughter Jamie Stewart, Royal Plantation in Ocho Rios (where, in the Sixties, Noel Coward once entertained Ian Fleming and Blanche Blackwell) became an all-suite hotel, each suite with a butler.
Steadily the Sandals offer went upmarket too. Premium wines and à la carte dining were introduced; spa treatments became ‘included’. A decade ago Butch handed over daily reins of Sandals and ATL to his son, Adam, but remained chairman. The innovations continued. Where once the Caribbean was all about fly and flop, now travellers want experiences. So Island Routes, a tour company, was founded. Other changes were forced on them: Sandals’ focus on heterosexual couples attracted controversy, but the message from the market was clear and in 2003 same-sex couples were permitted in Sandals resorts.
Butch and Sandals are remembered around Jamaica for philanthropic reasons as well as the employment he brought to so many. Sandals Foundation was created to support education and healthcare in Jamaica and the Sandals Corporate University provides lifelong learning for employees of Sandals and associated hotel businesses. Sandals has won countless industry awards and Butch Stewart himself won the highest national accolades, including the Order of Jamaica and Commander of the Order of Distinction. But for all public recognition as the Godfather of Jamaican tourism, everyone in Jamaica knew him, and they referred to him by his nickname, Butch.
Sarah Greaves-Gabbadon remembers working with Butch
“I got my start in the travel industry working in public relations for Sandals Resorts in Jamaica in 1993. It’s no exaggeration to say that my years there informed everything I now know about the industry in general and Caribbean travel in particular. But the biggest bonus was witnessing firsthand the force of nature that was the company’s founder, Butch Stewart. His death this week is hard to fathom. How can Mr Stewart, a fixture in tourism for my entire career, be gone? Larger than life and just as loud, he popularised the all-inclusive concept in the Caribbean.
“Hundreds have shared memories of the powerhouse, and to theirs, I now add mine. I remember when we first met he christened me Sample (I’m 4’ 10”) and never called me anything else. I remember how excited I was the first time I flew with him in his private jet back to Jamaica from Antigua, where we’d recently opened a resort. And I remember when I asked to take a sabbatical for an editorial internship at a Manhattan magazine, his only terms were: “Never forget where home is, Sample, and promise to come back within six months.” I didn’t, and I did. This week the travel industry mourns a titan and a family grieves its patriarch. But his legacy will endure, not only in the companies he created, but in the lives he touched. Walk good, Mr. Stewart.”
