The bitter family quarrel over the bequeathed fortune of deceased Caribbean tourism mogul Gordon ‘Butch’ Stewart is neither first, nor last. But the sheer size of the inherited family-fruitcake, the number of heirs and successors holding slicing knives and the geopolitics of the financial and economic interests involved – all have implications for the immediate future of regional tourism.
The Jamaica and US branches of the Stewart Family both feel they’re very-right, one citing the very-successful history of the current leadership of Sandals Resorts International (SRI) and the other pointing to a very-last-minute change-of-mind by its Founding Father, on his dying bed.
The two coexisted throughout SRI’s spectacular growth while Butch nurtured the tree into the leading Caribbean brand through its multiplicity of properties.
The long and deep, sharp and complex arguments and calculative deductions presented involve separate and interlocking trusts and trustees – and related matters of trust.
Both sides can go to the last legal wire to win, or be advised to agree-to-disagree and compromise in a win-win situation, but neither seems close-enough to agreeing on how much is enough.
So, it can also take more than costly and seemingly-unending legal courtroom arguments to resolve unhealthy business matters also possibly curable in boardrooms.
But the Jamaica branch feels it’s being unfairly treated by its US-based fellow heirs and successors, so more legal and judicial interventions can also be expected, including before the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ).
But the question bruising minds on both sides is not only why or how it all got to this, but also, now that the bad blood has been spilt in the global public square, how the two warring sides can avoid haemorrhaging and eventually quickly drying-up the fountain of their wealth to death.
Under Butch and Adam, together and separately, SRI became the Caribbean’s prime tourism employer, with almost 15,000 workers in Antigua & Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Curacao, Grenada, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, Turks & Caicos Islands – and soon in St. Vincent & The Grenadines.
SRI consistently boosts international visitor travel to Jamaica and the wider region, also expanding relentlessly during COVID and into the Dutch-speaking Caribbean.
Adam, at the head of the associated companies under the umbrella of the wider Jamaica-based SRI-Appliance Traders Limited (ATL) business landscape, has kept the chain growing and expanding at no-less pace than designed and implemented by its departed Founding Chairman.
Butch’s pet projects have been completed with new SRI properties opened in Curacao and existing ones enlarged everywhere – and especially at Dunn’s River in Jamaica (one year after his passing) where his early dreams grew from also managing other hotels to ownership of his unique separate hotel brands for couples and families.
Adam has understandably challenged the claim that Butch suddenly and substantially changed his Last Will and Testament on his last day on Planet Earth, while “in and out of lucidity…”.
It’s clear, however, that before his ultimate departure, Butch had long put in place several related legal and financial mechanisms to ensure smooth processing of the execution of his final wishes.
The American branch is holding-on to what the Jamaican branch sees as fig-leaf evidence to back its claim of a last-breath change-of-mind by someone who’d demonstrated an admirable lifelong capacity for patience before making the long-term investment decisions that preceded the arrival of each new Sandals and Beaches hotel everywhere they operate.
Sandals’ Caribbean credentials also earlier extended to Cuba, where it ran three properties; and in December 2022, Guyana’s President Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali said his government was interested in the possibility of a rainforest and eco-tourism oriented ‘Sandals Amazon’.
In 2023, SRI launched the Sandals Corporate University (SCU) to provide academic certificates to its management and executive staff; and in February 2024, its first of a series of Sandals Early Childhood Development (ECD) centres, to provide a quality education service for children of single-parent mothers and other staff with daily childcare difficulties that affect their work performance.
SRI’s contributions to the wider Caribbean economy transcends all other competitors, in many cases as the biggest employer in tourism and largest single contributor to national employment and taxes.
However, many regional observers feel all that may only continue if SRI remains on its present course, retains its present structure and continues operating according to Butch’s Last Will and Testament.
If Adam continues wearing and walking in Butch’s sandals and leaving SRI’s ever-growing footprints on the sands of more Caribbean beaches, the region can continue to expect more millions of visitors — and more thousands of Caribbean workers living-out their dreams at SRI properties, many growing from back-room and front-desk positions to everything from property managers and financial controllers, at home and abroad.
The two branches seem closer to breaking from the family tree’s stem than sharing a common vision for planting more trees with deeper roots, growing bigger and stronger for their and SRI’s common future.
But Caribbean governments and people have a clear stake in the eventual outcome of this unfortunate family dispute.
SRI is the Caribbean’s best global example of a company built entirely on Caribbean sands and cement, bricks and mortar, with an enduring and sustainable human infrastructure that’s kept the region’s flag flying-high at every World Travel Awards (WTA) in the past three-plus decades.
The globally-respected SRI empire ‘Butch’ built out of his first Sandals hotel in Montego Bay in 1980 threatens to all-come-tumbling-down, at avalanche speed, from a possible — yet avoidable — overdose of excessive combustible internal anxiety.
Nonetheless, Butch Stewart’s lasting legacy of pursuing legal cases for as long as he felt SRI was right and on good legal track, is best exemplified by a coconut plant in a bucket near a bar in a Barbados hotel he was bidding for in the 20th Century, that grew into a sky-high fruit-bearing tree by the time he opened its doors in Century 21.
PHOTO CAPTION: As far back as 2018, after SRI’s presence in Saint Lucia from one hotel in 1993 to three luxury properties a quarter-of-a-century later, Founding Chairman Gordon ‘Butch’ Stewart (left) chose his son Adam (at right) as the heir and successor to keep SRI forever walking on water – and Caribbean tourism afloat. (PHOTO COURTESY: SRI and Business Focus magazine)