If you are a fan of Sandals and Beaches, you’ve probably already heard yesterday’s announcement about the new partnership between Royal Caribbean Group (RCG) and Sandals Resorts. The Royal Caribbean Group is the parent company of Royal Caribbean Cruise Line, Celebrity Cruises, and Silversea Cruises.

They’re not calling this a “sale” of Sandals to RCG, rather a Landmark Partnership, or an agreement to form a partnership. But RCG is putting up 3 billion US dollars and will acquire a 50% equity interest in Sandals and Beaches Resorts. The joint venture will be governed by a board under the shared leadership of Adam Stewart (Executive Chairman of Sandals Resorts) and Jason Liberty (Chairman and CEO of Royal Caribbean Group). I’m not sure what all this really means, but it sounds like RCG will have a say in how and to where Sandals expands.

There will be NO changes to Sandals bookings already made. The deal isn’t expected to close until early 2027, so I wouldn’t expect any noticeable changes until after that. And what the changes will be is anyone’s guess.

We watched two webinars about this yesterday, the first as clients of Sandals and the second as travel agents. Both featured Adam Stewart explaining the situation and his main takeaway was that “Sandals will be Sandals, and Beaches will be Beaches”. In other words, we shouldn’t expect to see changes to the brand. He stated that he has been pursuing a partnership with another company for many years, starting while his father Gordon “Butch” Stewart, the founder of Sandals, was still alive. Adam wants to expand Sandals and Beaches to locations outside of the Caribbean and said that there are already two locations under scrutiny. Although he wouldn’t say where, he said that the first would be announced in the near future.

One of the interesting things that Adam mentioned was that the cruise passengers from RCG ships would NOT be given access to Sandals or Beaches properties while on a cruise. This is good news in that a resort won’t be overwhelmed with cruise ship passengers getting day passes to the nearest resort to the cruise ship’s port of call. But he did mention that if RCG wanted to build a port of call resort for their passengers, that Sandals would help design and build that resort due to their expertise in such manners.

Not many corporate mergers or agreements come without noticeable changes, so I guess we’ll just have to wait and see till after the dust settles and the agreement is finalized. There are a lot of people that think this will be a good thing for Sandals. But there are at least as many that think Adam has sold out and that this will be the end of Sandals as we know it.

It has been pointed out that RCG has two private islands for their cruise passengers and one of them is in Haiti. That island has been closed for a long time, if it ever even opened. Cruise lines like to have a private island or a “day excursion” property for their passengers to enjoy and Sandals owns a lot of land in the Caribbean that hasn’t been developed. Sound like a match made in heaven?

If you have an opinion on all this, please feel free to leave a comment below.