American Airlines and Sandals resorts international discuss Regional airlift

A re­cent meet­ing be­tween Amer­i­can Air­lines, one of the world’s largest air­line com­pa­nies, and San­dals Re­sorts In­ter­na­tion­al (SRI) can re­store much-need­ed air­lift to the re­gion.

This is the first time AA has host­ed a Caribbean ho­tel for such a meet­ing, a state­ment from San­dals said. It added that the “land­mark meet­ing” be­tween top ex­ec­u­tives of AA and SRI took place at the Amer­i­can Air­lines Head­quar­ters in Dal­las, Texas.

Ac­cord­ing to the state­ment, this comes at a time when the re­gion­al tourism and hos­pi­tal­i­ty sec­tor along with sev­er­al Cari­com gov­ern­ments are work­ing hard to re­store air­lift to the Caribbean af­ter the fall­out from the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

SRI’s ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Adam Stew­art added that this is part of San­dals’ on­go­ing ef­forts to help dri­ve the re­cov­ery of the re­gion­al tourism sec­tor.

“This meet­ing could not have come at a bet­ter time as we seek to re­store the air­lift that is so vi­tal to the re­gion’s hos­pi­tal­i­ty and tourism sec­tor,” Stew­art said.

He not­ed that the in­cred­i­ble re­la­tion­ship San­dals has with Amer­i­can Air­lines has led to enor­mous ben­e­fits for the many des­ti­na­tions where San­dals now op­er­ates.

“We ex­pect they will soon be­gin plan­ning for in­creased flights to the des­ti­na­tions where we will soon be op­er­at­ing such as Saint Vin­cent and the Grenadines and Cu­ra­cao.

“I re­mem­ber my dad, the late Gor­don ‘Butch’ Stew­art used to al­ways boast that wher­ev­er San­dals es­tab­lish­es a re­sort the air­lines were sure to fol­low, and I am be­yond proud that along with the amaz­ing teams at San­dals and Unique Va­ca­tions we con­tin­ue to car­ry on and build on that lega­cy,” Stew­art added.

He al­so thanked AA for the in­cred­i­ble sup­port it had al­ready pro­vid­ed thus far in help­ing to sup­port re­cov­ery ef­forts.

Over the last 14 months, Stew­art not­ed, AA has demon­strat­ed a lev­el of strength and agili­ty in a high­ly com­plex time.

“If there is one thing COVID 19 has shown us is the pow­er of part­ner­ships and re­la­tion­ships,” Stew­art said, adding that busi­ness does not come to those who wait. Rather, he not­ed, it’s about get­ting out and mak­ing it hap­pen.

“We are pleased to be in a po­si­tion where we can ad­vo­cate on be­half of the en­tire Caribbean, and as­sist with try­ing to re-es­tab­lish and en­hance the routes that all our is­lands de­pend on to not just to bring vis­i­tors, but to con­nect with the rest of the world,” Stew­art said.

The dis­cus­sions al­so re­volved around growth, the ex­pan­sion of air ser­vice, how AA can pro­vide more flights to the Caribbean and how it can strength­en ef­forts in the re­gion.

Gary Sadler, ex­ec­u­tive vice-pres­i­dent of Sales and In­dus­try Re­la­tions at Unique Va­ca­tions, al­so agreed that this was great news for the re­gion, adding that this was a re­sult of San­dals tak­ing the ini­tia­tive to go out and do what was need­ed to dri­ve the re­cov­ery of tourism.

“Build­ing tourism goes be­yond just hav­ing a beau­ti­ful beach and nice ho­tels; the meet­ing with AA show­cas­es San­dals’ con­tin­ued com­mit­ment to be­ing a cham­pi­on of the en­tire Caribbean tourism sec­tor.

“The com­pa­ny is con­stant­ly tak­ing steps to pro­mote the re­gion, and their suc­cess is re­flect­ed in the fact that there is in­creas­ing­ly high de­mand for trav­el to their re­sorts and to the re­gion. This meet­ing will en­sure that as Amer­i­can Air­lines moves to in­crease its ser­vice world­wide, the Caribbean re­mains at the top of the list,” he added.

The San­dals team was led by Stew­art and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Geb­hard Rainier and al­so in­clud­ed ex­ec­u­tive vice-pres­i­dent of Sales and In­dus­try Re­la­tions for Unique Va­ca­tions (UVI) Gary Sadler along with UVI chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Jeff Clarke and se­nior vice pres­i­dent of Brand De­vel­op­ment Tony Cor­ti­zas.

Unique Va­ca­tions is the ex­clu­sive mar­ket­ing part­ner for San­dals Re­sorts.

The Amer­i­can Air­lines team com­prised vice pres­i­dent of Glob­al Sales Kyle Mabry, chief cus­tomer of­fi­cer of Amer­i­can Air­lines Al­i­son Tay­lor and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor for Latin Amer­i­ca, Caribbean and Flori­da Sales, Chris­tine Valls.