NEW YORK — Sandals Resorts Executive Chairman Adam Stewart received the American Friends of Jamaica’s International Achievement Award at the Hummingbird Gala at The Plaza Hotel on October 16, 2026, recognizing his contributions to Caribbean tourism, business and philanthropy.Honored alongside actress and humanitarian Sheryl Lee Ralph, Stewart used the occasion to celebrate the people of Jamaica and the vision of his late father, Gordon “Butch” Stewart.
Jamaica’s Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett shared his congratulations with unmistakable pride. The moment reached beyond one businessman receiving an award abroad. It celebrated a Jamaican enterprise, Caribbean talent, and a family whose ambitions helped change the region’s tourism industry.
At 45, Adam Stewart has already spent two decades in senior leadership at Sandals. His story offers Jamaica something powerful: evidence that a business rooted in the Caribbean can compete internationally while creating opportunities for Caribbean people.
A Jamaican Celebration in Manhattan
The American Friends of Jamaica’s 45th anniversary gala brought Jamaican achievement to one of New York’s most recognizable addresses. Prime Minister Andrew Holness and Bartlett attended an evening connecting business, culture and philanthropy. Stewart’s fellow honouree, Sheryl Lee Ralph, received the International Humanitarian Award for her entertainment career and advocacy, particularly her longstanding work on HIV/AIDS awareness.
The setting was glamorous, but the purpose extended well beyond the ballroom.
AFJ supports education, healthcare, and economic development in Jamaica. Its recognition of Stewart highlighted institution-building through business, the Sandals Foundation, the We Care Foundation and Sandals Corporate University. The celebration placed commercial achievement alongside an obligation to improve lives.
That connection between enterprise and opportunity is central to understanding why Stewart’s recognition resonates at home.
The Boy Who Grew Up Alongside Sandals
Adam was born in 1981, the same year his father launched Sandals in Montego Bay. His childhood and the company’s early development unfolded together. He has described the brand as something like a sibling, recalling how his father involved him in the business as it grew.
For him, the resort world was familiar long before it became a career.
In his own recollections, learning hospitality included working in the entertainment department and developing confidence in public speaking. Hotels were places where he watched people work, solve problems, and welcome strangers.
Those experiences offered an early introduction to a truth every successful hotelier eventually learns: beautiful surroundings attract attention, but people determine whether guests return.
Adam later graduated from Florida International University’s hospitality programme. In 2006, Butch appointed his 25-year-old son chief executive of Sandals Resorts International—an extraordinary responsibility at an age when many hospitality graduates are still finding their professional footing.
The family name opened the door. The role brought the harder task of earning credibility with experienced employees, commercial partners and guests who associated Sandals with his father.
Butch’s Legacy—and Adam’s Responsibility
Gordon “Butch” Stewart founded Sandals and built the foundation Adam would eventually lead. The company’s success spans generations and reflects the work of thousands of employees.
Butch’s reputation extended beyond hotel ownership. Personal recollections published after his death described a businessman who helped employees, supported people facing medical emergencies, and maintained a fierce attachment to Jamaica. His stature came from the combination of entrepreneurial ambition and personal generosity.
He gave Jamaica a homegrown hospitality brand with international recognition. For many who worked with him, his legacy was also personal: a career encouraged, a family assisted, or an opportunity offered.
When Butch died on January 4, 2021, aged 79, Adam assumed leadership of a company inseparable from its founder’s personality. He became its second executive chairman after years as chief executive and deputy chairman.
The timing compounded the challenge. International tourism was confronting the pandemic, and the family was grieving.
Preserving the company’s spirit while preparing it for the future required judgment, confidence and an understanding of what made Sandals distinctive.
Making All-Inclusive More Ambitious
The business promise behind Sandals is easy to understand: make a Caribbean holiday appealing, convenient and memorable, then give guests reasons to return.
Delivering that promise requires constant investment. Under Adam’s leadership, the company has pushed further into luxury accommodation and expanded into destinations including Curaçao and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Its brands serve adult holidaymakers through Sandals and families through Beaches.
One revealing example of his approach began on his own honeymoon.
After visiting the Maldives with his wife Jill in 2009, Stewart pursued the idea of bringing overwater accommodation closer to Sandals’ core markets. The project required years of planning and regulatory work before the company opened its overwater villas at Sandals Royal Caribbean in Jamaica in December 2016.
The idea reflected an entrepreneurial instinct: experience something compelling elsewhere, then ask how the Caribbean could deliver its own distinctive version.
He also founded Island Routes, extending his business interests into excursions and experiences. That offers visitors an avenue to encounter the region beyond their accommodation and creates opportunities to connect tourism with local attractions and communities.
Together, these developments show a leader willing to build on an established formula while continuing to question what guests might want next.
A Global Business Built on Caribbean People
At the New York gala, Stewart placed employees at the centre of his account of Sandals’ success.
According to The Gleaner’s report, he said the business employed approximately 20,000 people, with 97 per cent born in the Caribbean. He credited Jamaican teams with helping the company introduce new ideas and raise standards across its operations.
His emphasis was telling. He chose to celebrate the ability of Caribbean people to compete successfully on the world stage.
That is where this story carries its strongest message of national pride.
A resort’s reputation depends on chefs, engineers, gardeners, housekeepers, managers, watersports instructors, and countless others whose work shapes every stay. International recognition for the company also reflects their skills.
For a young Jamaican considering hospitality, Sandals offers a clear example of the possibilities within the industry: learning a profession, taking on greater responsibility, and building a career connected to home.
Giving Back Through Institutions
Adam helped launch the Sandals Foundation in 2009. Its work focuses on education, community development and environmental protection. The foundation says Sandals Resorts International covers its administration and management expenses, allowing all donated funds to support its programs.
The approach gives the company’s community commitments an enduring structure, bringing together employees, guests and partners around projects across the Caribbean.
That work has particular relevance during Jamaica’s recovery from Hurricane Melissa.
In September 2026, the foundation reported school restoration projects valued at more than J$214 million, including rebuilding, roofing, water storage and solar installations. Partners contributed to the effort, and AFJ worked with the foundation on rehabilitation at Cove Primary in Hanover.
The connection gives the New York honor additional substance. The awarding organization and the company’s charitable foundation have participated in practical work benefiting Jamaican children.
Recognition becomes meaningful when it connects to classrooms, safer buildings and restored opportunities.
Leadership Tested by Loss and Disaster
Stewart’s public success has unfolded alongside profound personal loss.
His wife Jill died in July 2023 after a battle with cancer. A committed runner and supporter of educational fundraising, she is remembered through the Jill Stewart MoBay City Run, which raises support for students.
Her memory remains connected to a cause she supported: helping young people move forward through education.
Professionally, Hurricane Melissa brought another severe test. Resorts required extensive restoration while employees and surrounding communities faced their own losses.
In August 2026, the Jamaica Observer reported Stewart’s account that approximately 2,000 employees had remained on payroll while unable to work, alongside financial assistance to staff and community support through the foundation.
Supporting employees through prolonged disruption is a consequential business decision. It recognizes that a company’s recovery depends on the people who will eventually welcome its guests again.
These decisions help explain the qualities associated with Stewart’s leadership: ambition, resilience, attachment to Jamaica and a willingness to invest through adversity.
A Tourism Champion Jamaica Can Celebrate
The Hummingbird Gala recognition joins an established record of honors. Stewart received Jamaica’s Order of Distinction, Commander Class, for his contribution to tourism and the hotel industry in 2016. The University of the West Indies conferred an honorary Doctor of Laws on him in 2022 for his contributions to Caribbean communities and the region’s development.
Awards recognize achievement. A lasting legacy emerges from what that achievement makes possible for others.
For Adam Stewart, the strongest claim to being a tourism hero rests in the opportunities created through the business he leads, the ambition he has brought to its development, and the community institutions he has helped support.
Butch Stewart showed how far a Jamaican hospitality business could travel. Adam is helping write its next chapter—with Jamaican talent and Caribbean identity at its heart.
At The Plaza, the honor carried his name. Across Jamaica and the Caribbean, thousands of people share in the achievement behind it.
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