Remembering Gordon “Butch” Stewart, Sandals Resorts Founder and Journey Market Icon

The planet knew Gordon “Butch” Stewart as the male who popularized Caribbean all-inclusive resorts, commencing with Sandals Montego Bay in 1981 and increasing it into a multi-island behemoth with 23 qualities (and counting) under five brands in seven nations around the world. The Caribbean realized Butch as 1 of its fiercest champions, a single whose eyesight, travel, and promoting bucks set the islands on the radar of sun-starved travelers in look for of a worth-packed trip. Jamaicans understood him as an intensely proud son of the soil, a simple-spoken powerhouse driving a clutch of companies that market anything from refrigerators and Porsches to newspapers, and who when led the investment group powering the privatization of the now-defunct airline Air Jamaica.

But to me—and any individual who ever worked for him—these mammoth achievements are second to what we recall about Mr. Stewart. (If you worked for him, he was never “Butch.”) 

I labored in general public relations for Sandals in the Montego Bay—Mo’Bay, to locals—head business from 1993 to 1997. The 1st time we satisfied, Mr. Stewart christened me “Sample,” a nod to my peak. (I’m 4’10.”) He never named me any other title when I labored there, nor many years later on when we’d see each individual other at market functions. In his signature striped shirt and aviator sunglasses, Mr. Stewart would swagger in excess of like a bow-legged cowboy, his tummy unapologetically leading the way, give me a massive hug, and question, “What yuh saying, Sample?”

I don’t forget how excited I was to fly with him in his private jet for the first time we had been heading home to Jamaica from Antigua, exactly where Sandals experienced opened a vacation resort in 1991. He’d extended the invitation as casually as if he have been supplying to share a cab, nevertheless I did not realize he was critical right up until I heard him request someone to “tell Johnny”—one of his pilots—“to get the plane all set.” Ask anyone who worked for Mr. Stewart and you’ll listen to of equivalent kindnesses quietly prolonged. Long just before the company’s non-revenue, the Sandals Foundation, was founded in 2009 to endorse health care, schooling, and environmental recognition in the islands wherever its resorts operate, Mr. Stewart paid out for individual staffers’ health care costs out of his personal pocket and utilised his organization connections to aid other people.

He was supportive, also. When I nervously questioned him to make it possible for me to get a sabbatical from my position to accept an editorial internship at a magazine in New York City, he agreed with only two terms: “Never forget about exactly where household is, Sample. And come again within 6 months.”