Royal Caribbean Group has agreed to acquire a 50% stake in Sandals and Beaches Resorts for approximately US$3 billion, creating a major new partnership between the global cruise giant and one of the Caribbean’s most successful home-grown hospitality brands.
The deal values the Sandals and Beaches business at roughly US$6 billion and is expected to close in early 2027, subject to customary approvals. Adam Stewart will remain executive chairman, while the new joint venture will be governed by a board under the shared leadership of Stewart and Royal Caribbean chairman and CEO Jason Liberty.
But beyond the extraordinary valuation lies a bigger Caribbean question: Is this the capital Sandals needs to become a truly global hospitality brand—or does selling 50% increase the region’s dependence on US-controlled tourism at precisely the wrong moment?
There are business deals, and then there are transactions that say something much larger about a country
There are business deals, and then there are transactions that say something much larger about a country and a region. Royal Caribbean Group’ s agreement to pay approximately US$3 billion for a 50 percent stake in Sandals and Beaches Resorts belongs firmly in the second category.
- For Royal Caribbean, the logic is easy to understand.
- For Sandals, it may also prove financially brilliant.
- But for Jamaica and the wider Caribbean, the transaction deserves a much more difficult conversation.
- Because Sandals is not merely another collection of hotels.
It is one of the rare global tourism brands conceived, built and controlled in the Caribbean. And Jamaica has now watched the Stewart family agree to surrender half of it.
From Montego Bay to a US$6-billion valuation
Gordon “Butch” Stewart opened the first Sandals resort in Montego Bay in 1981.
What followed was an extraordinary Caribbean entrepreneurial story: a Jamaican company competing successfully against international hotel groups, developing its own distinctive all-inclusive model and ultimately building Sandals and Beaches into brands operating across the Caribbean.
That business has now been effectively valued at around US$6 billion.
Under the agreement announced on September 23, Royal Caribbean Group will acquire 50 percent of Sandals and Beaches for approximately US$3 billion. The companies say the price represents approximately 10 times forward EBITDA. This is not, importantly, a complete sale.
Adam Stewart remains executive chairman. The Stewart family retains an interest, and Stewart and Royal Caribbean chairman and CEO Jason Liberty will share leadership of the joint venture’s board. Existing bookings, loyalty programs and resort operations are supposed to continue normally.
Royal Caribbean is also borrowing to make the investment, having secured committed debt financing from Morgan Stanley. So the headline “Sandals sold to Royal Caribbean” goes too far.
But pretending that nothing fundamental has changed would go too far in the other direction.
Half of one of the Caribbean’s most valuable indigenous tourism businesses is being transferred to a global corporation headquartered in Miami.
That matters.
Why Royal Caribbean wants Sandals
Look at the transaction from Royal Caribbean’s side, and the strategy is compelling.
Royal Caribbean already owns some of the most powerful distribution machinery in global leisure travel. It operates Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity Cruises and Silversea, as well as a growing collection of private destinations and beach clubs. For years, it has been moving beyond simply selling cabins on ships.
Its strategy increasingly involves owning more of the holiday: the ship, the destination, the excursion, the beach experience, the loyalty relationship and, increasingly, the customer’s entire vacation ecosystem.
Sandals fills an enormous missing piece.
Royal Caribbean does not have to spend decades learning how to operate luxury Caribbean all-inclusive resorts. It can buy into perhaps the most recognizable Caribbean-born operator in the category.
- It gains hotels.
- It gains beachfront real estate.
- It gains Sandals’ expertise.
- But perhaps most importantly, it gains the customer.
Imagine the possibilities.
A couple taking a Celebrity cruise could subsequently be marketed a Sandals holiday. A Sandals customer could be introduced to Silversea. Families staying at Beaches could enter Royal Caribbean’s enormous vacation ecosystem. Cruise, resort, private destination and loyalty program begin feeding one another.
That is why this deal should not be viewed simply as Royal Caribbean purchasing hotels. Royal Caribbean is purchasing access to an established Caribbean vacation platform.
And that is exactly why the Caribbean should pay attention
For decades, Caribbean governments have spoken about extracting more value from tourism. The problem has never simply been getting tourists onto Caribbean beaches.
The harder question is: Who owns the businesses through which those tourists spend their money?
- Who controls the booking?
- Who controls the customer data?
- Who controls the brand?
- Who owns the distribution platform?
- And ultimately, where does the profit go?
Sandals represented something unusually powerful in that equation.
It demonstrated that the Caribbean did not merely have to supply the sunshine, beaches, workers and hotel rooms while multinational companies supplied the capital and captured the brand value.
A company born in Jamaica could itself become the multinational. That psychological and economic significance should not be underestimated.
The timing makes the decision even more interesting
The Caribbean is simultaneously being told that it must diversify. Recent IMF research could hardly be clearer.
Tourism source markets in the Caribbean are among the most concentrated in the world. Roughly 60 per cent of CARICOM stayover arrivals have historically originated in the United States, with most of the remainder coming from Canada and Europe.
Jamaica’s exposure is even greater.
The Jamaica Tourist Board said in 2025 that the United States accounted for nearly 70 per cent of arrivals. Other official data put the US share of Jamaica’s 2025 stopover visitors at 70.7 per cent.
The IMF has warned that this concentration creates vulnerability because changes in the American economy can disproportionately affect Caribbean arrivals. Meanwhile, geopolitical uncertainty, changing trade relationships and economic fragmentation are forcing small Caribbean states to think seriously about resilience.
Caribbean tourism organizations themselves are pushing diversification.
And there are encouraging signs: the 2026 Caribbean Travel Trends Report produced by the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association and Amadeus found demand from Latin America rising 24 percent, while premium travel demand from South America increased dramatically.
The strategic objective therefore seems obvious: Keep the enormous American market, but build additional markets aggressively so that the Caribbean is not dangerously dependent upon any single country.
Against that background, Sandals’ decision is fascinating.
At the very moment the Caribbean is discussing diversification away from excessive dependence on the United States, its most famous indigenous hotel company is tying half its corporate future to one of America’s most powerful vacation corporations.
That does not automatically make the transaction wrong. But it certainly makes it worthy of scrutiny.
There is another way of looking at it
Adam Stewart’s counterargument is powerful.
- Perhaps this isn’t retreat.
- Perhaps it is expansion.
Stewart says the partnership will allow Sandals to grow faster while maintaining the character of the brands his father created.
And there is evidence that the ambition extends well beyond simply operating the existing resorts.
In an interview with Travel Weekly , Stewart and Liberty described the opportunity in striking terms: taking Sandals and Beaches global.
That changes the calculation considerably.
What if Royal Caribbean’s capital, technology, customer database, loyalty network and global distribution allow a Jamaican-created hospitality concept to expand into markets Sandals could never efficiently reach alone?
Imagine Sandals eventually operating in the Mediterranean, Indian Ocean, Latin America or other resort markets while maintaining Jamaican executive leadership and Caribbean hospitality DNA.
Then the narrative becomes very different.
Instead of an American company swallowing a Caribbean champion, the partnership could become the mechanism through which a Caribbean brand finally achieves truly global scale.
There is an important distinction between selling outand scaling up. We will not know which occurred here from the size of the cheque. We will know from what happens next.
US$3 billion also buys options
There is another uncomfortable reality. Family businesses eventually confront questions that founders do not.
- Succession.
- Capital.
- Risk.
- Expansion.
- Liquidity.
- And concentration of family wealth.
Butch Stewart was a singular entrepreneur. After his death in 2021, the next generation inherited not simply hotels but an increasingly valuable multinational enterprise requiring billions of dollars of investment to continue competing with global hospitality giants.
Reports that Sandals had explored a transaction did not begin this week. The Jamaica Gleaner , citing earlier reporting by The Wall Street Journal , noted that bankers had previously been engaged to explore a sale at a valuation reportedly between US$6 billion and US$7 billion.
In other words, this transaction should not be seen as merely a sudden response to today’s geopolitical environment. There appears to have been a longer strategic conversation about ownership, capital and the future of the company.
And compared with an outright sale, retaining 50 per cent while securing US$3 billion and gaining access to Royal Caribbean’s infrastructure may have been the family’s preferred compromise.
But 50 per cent is not “just an investor”
Caribbean observers should nevertheless resist being seduced by the reassuring vocabulary of corporate announcements.
- “Partnership.”
- “Growth.”
- “Synergies.”
- “Shared values.”
- “Accelerating opportunities.”
These are standard transaction phrases. The economic reality is more consequential. Royal Caribbean is not purchasing five per cent of Sandals. It is purchasing half.
At 50–50, future disagreements become important. Decisions over expansion, capital expenditure, branding, procurement, technology, distribution and strategy will necessarily involve the American partner. And Royal Caribbean brings enormous economic weight to that negotiating table.
The unanswered questions therefore matter more than the ceremonial photograph of Adam Stewart and Jason Liberty signing the agreement in Miami.
- What protections preserve Caribbean control over the Sandals identity?
- Can either shareholder eventually sell its interest?
- Does Royal Caribbean have rights to acquire the remaining 50 per cent under particular circumstances?
- How will future capital requirements be funded?
- Who controls customer data?
- Will procurement remain substantially Caribbean-based?
- Where will intellectual property ultimately reside?
- Will future resorts remain concentrated in the Caribbean or will the brand increasingly become a global platform?
And perhaps most importantly:
Is 50 percent the destination — or merely the first stop on the journey toward 100 percent?
The announced agreement does not answer all of those questions publicly.
This is bigger than Adam Stewart
It would be easy to personalize this debate.
- Did Adam Stewart protect his father’s legacy?
- Did he sell the family silver?
- Did he “sell his soul”?
Those questions make excellent social-media ammunition, but they risk missing the more important issue.
Adam Stewart and his family own an extraordinarily valuable private business. They are entitled to make commercial decisions about that business.
The more consequential Caribbean question is why the region still struggles to provide its successful companies with the scale of capital, financing, distribution and technology required to become global giants without eventually turning to larger corporations outside the region.
- Where are the Caribbean institutional investors capable of participating in transactions of this magnitude?
- Where are the regional capital markets capable of helping a US$6-billion Caribbean hospitality company finance global expansion?
- Where are the pension funds, sovereign investment structures and cross-Caribbean investment vehicles capable of keeping ownership of successful regional enterprises substantially within the region?
Those are harder questions than blaming one businessman.
The real test
The transaction can ultimately be judged by outcomes that are measurable.
- Does Sandals expand?
- Do Caribbean workers gain better jobs and opportunities?
- Do Caribbean suppliers receive more business?
- Does the company develop new resorts?
- Does a Jamaican-created brand become genuinely global?
- Does strategic decision-making remain meaningfully rooted in the Caribbean?
And does the partnership help Sandals attract customers from Latin America, Europe, Asia and other emerging markets — or does it bind the company even more tightly to the North American tourism ecosystem?
Those answers will tell us far more than today’s press release. Because US$3 billion is undeniably an extraordinary validation of what Butch Stewart built.
A Jamaican entrepreneur started with one Montego Bay hotel in 1981 and created an enterprise for which one of the world’s largest vacation companies is now prepared to pay billions merely to own half.
That is a Caribbean success story. But it also creates a Caribbean paradox.
We spent decades proving that we could build our own global tourism champion. Now that champion has become valuable enough for global capital to want half of it.
- Perhaps Adam Stewart has found the partner capable of taking his father’s creation to a level the family could not reach alone.
- Perhaps Royal Caribbean’s capital and distribution machine will turn Sandals from a Caribbean multinational into a truly global hospitality company.
If so, history may regard the transaction as a masterstroke. But the Caribbean should watch carefully.
- Because ownership matters.
- Control matters.
- Intellectual property matters.
And in a region whose beaches, labor and culture have generated enormous wealth for international tourism companies, locally created brands matter too. The question therefore isn’t whether Adam Stewart sold his soul. That is too simplistic.
The more important question is whether he has sold half the company in order to make the Caribbean brand twice as powerful — or whether the Caribbean has just surrendered half of something it may never be able to build again.
The answer will not be found in the US$3-billion purchase price. It will be found in who controls Sandals ten years from now.
Who is Adam Stewart according to his own social media account?
“Adam is the embodiment of the modern renaissance man leading the charge in the Caribbean in the innovation and creativity critical to achieving high levels of growth. His is the type of acumen and agility that The UWI prides itself on honing to meet the needs of our burgeoning region.“ – Sir Hilary Beckles, Vice-Chancellor of the University of the West Indies.
Adam Stewart is the dynamic Executive Chairman of the world-leading superbrand, Sandals Resorts International Island Routes and The ATL Group, Jamaica’s longest standing automotive and commercial and domestic appliance distributors and the largest private sector group in the Caribbean.
Prior to becoming Executive Chairman of SRI, Stewart spent more than a decade as Deputy Chairman and CEO of the organization, leading the brand’s transition to its now Luxury Included® signature and overseeing a period of great expansion. His efforts have been recognized by numerous hospitality industry awards including being named the 2015 Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association Hotelier of the Year.
Deeply committed to the region, Stewart is founder and President of the Sandals Foundation, the 501 (c) (3) nonprofit organization aimed at making a difference in the Caribbean communities where Sandals Resorts operates. One hundred percent of the funds contributed by the public to the Sandals Foundation go directly to programs benefiting the Caribbean.
For his outstanding contribution to tourism and the hotel industry, Stewart received the Order of Distinction (Commander Class) in 2016 and later that year, was named the Caribbean American Mover and Shaker – Humanitarian of the Year by the Caribbean Media Network. In 2017, the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO) honoured Stewart with the Jerry Award for outstanding contributions to Caribbean development. Under his leadership in 2020, SRI responded to the Jamaican Government’s call for COVID-19 relief, handing over Sandals Carlyle Resort free of charge for 18 months and donating JA$30M for the purchase of care packages.
Stewart sits on the Board of Directors of Wysinco Group Limited and is a member of the Executive Committee of the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC). A graduate and active alumnus of The Chaplin School of Hospitality & Tourism Management at Florida International University (FIU) in Miami, Stewart recently orchestrated a partnership between FIU and The UWI, signing an MOU to work together to establish The Gordon “Butch” Stewart International School of Hospitality and Tourism in honor of Stewart’s father and SRI founder, Gordon “Butch” Stewart.
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