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SOURCE: https://skift.com/ – Sandals Resorts, the Caribbean luxury all-inclusive operator, is said to be restarting sale efforts a few years after its founder’s death. The potential move comes as the brand makes a multi-million dollar marketing push.
Sandals Resorts International has renewed efforts to sell itself, and hopes to fetch between $6 billion and $7 billion, according to a report Wednesday in the Wall Street Journal.
The Jamaican-based luxury all-inclusive operator, which markets couples-only vacations across the Caribbean, has engaged bankers to explore a sale process, the Wall Street Journal said, citing anonymous sources.
People inside the company told the Journal that the goal was to solicit bids from major hotel groups and private equity investors. No decision has been finalized, and Sandals may decide against a sale.
The company last explored selling around 2019, but the plans were derailed by the pandemic and by the 2021 death of Gordon “Butch” Stewart, who founded Sandals in 1981 as one employee at a 99-room property.
Adam Stewart, Butch’s son, now serves as executive chairman.
Sandals owns and runs luxury properties in Jamaica, the Bahamas, Saint Lucia, Grenada, Barbados, Antigua, Curaçao, and Turks and Caicos.
It has acquired land that could potentially double its footprint, the company told Skift in December.
The renewed sale effort could be strategic. Major hotel groups like Hyatt, Marriott, and Accor are aggressively expanding their all-inclusive portfolios.
Exhibit A: Hyatt Hotels agreed last month to acquire Playa Hotels & Resorts for approximately $2.6 billion, including debt. Playa operates 24 resorts in the Caribbean and Mexico.
Stewart spoke with Skift in December about the company’s most ambitious brand overhaul to date, with a multimillion-dollar “Made of Caribbean” campaign running throughout this year.
The campaign is blanketing prime media real estate (Times Square, the Super Bowl, Golden Globes) and less traditional outdoor marketing, such as ads on rideshare vehicles in major cities. The saturation approach aims to reposition Sandals beyond its wedding and honeymoon associations as a gateway to authentic connections.
If it materializes, a Sandals transaction could rank among the largest real estate deals of the year. The company is the largest employer in the Caribbean, with about 20,000 workers.
Sandals Resorts to Launch Ad Blitz and Brand Overhaul: ‘Made of Caribbean’
Now that all the big hotel chains are muscling into the all-inclusive space, Sandals aims to stand out by reminding travelers of its Caribbean roots.
Accommodations Sector Stock Index Performance Year-to-Date
What am I looking at? The performance of hotels and short-term rental sector stocks within the ST200. The index includes companies publicly traded across global markets, including international and regional hotel brands, hotel REITs, hotel management companies, alternative accommodations, and timeshares.
The Skift Travel 200 (ST200) combines the financial performance of nearly 200 travel companies worth more than a trillion dollars into a single number.
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What will Sandals do with the money we all earned with them? Invest it in American and other investment institutions, oncemore depleting the Caribbean economy.
These light skin negro imposters never had the interest of Afro-Caribbean people at heart. It was all about vanity!!! Now we seeing their true colours. From withholding employee tips to holding on to our ABST MONIES! Wikkid setta nearga dem be!!!
One thing you could count on when you were driving from Coast to Coast in America, and it filled me with joy; it was to see the name SANDALS on billboards in just about every State, as it read…
W E L C O M E 🌴🌴🌴🏖️⛱️🌊
•••••TO•••••
SANDALS 🌴🌴🌴🌴ANTIGUA!
The joy of enjoying the beautiful beaches of my beloved Antigua, would lazily creep out of my thoughts, as I’d ask myself; and, yes answer myself too, why aren’t those #who’re in charge of managing the public coffers, start a public/private partnership, design, build, manage, maintain Our own Antiguan Brands of LUXURY RESORT, and do what Sandals is doing?
We owned the land, we have the resources (the quarry at Devil’s Bridge/Indian Town has proven this, as, the former beach_boy Barrett who became a multi millionaire from utilising these resources and others), we have the Human Resources, WE just never had OUR VISIONARIES, charged with the management of the public funds being proactive in setting up such partnerships.
Hindsight is said to be 20/20 vision, so in hindsight even if we only owned, 25% of what SANDALS is valued at today, not ONLY would all Antiguan & Barbuda families be well on their way, in establishing GENERATIONAL WEALTH, we would not be between a rock (USA) and hard place (CHINA) begging and borrowing from the scraps which they’re tossing around as bait, to to hook us bait, line and sinker!
Just imagine, WADADLI PARADISE 🌴LUXURY RESORT, on a pink sand beach, offering HIGH END SERVICES, owned by NATIONALS!
The Stewart’s and the Barrett’s would have nothing on us.
GREAT MARKETING is one thing which made SANDALS a giant in the Tourism Industry.
Jumbee_Picknee aka Ras Smood
De’ole Dutty Peg 🦶🏾 Garrat_Bastard
Vere C. Edwards
Just like with Scotia Bank and RBC the PM may force Sandals to sell local first.
@Less We Forget, please help us to understand how Gaston & Co., LLC, would be able to find 6 – 7 billion dollars? Less U Forget, SANDALS is not just located in Antigua and its governing body is not a public entity under the control of governments. Heck Antigua could hardly get SANDALS to pay taxes, plus give their employees TIPS which can sometimes be much more than your meager Service Industry salary.
Sandals cannot be confiscated like the Alfa Nero and sold at public auction.
@Less We Forget. That’s not how private business works. Banks are a highly regulated sector.