So this week Sandals release new names for their resorts. No big fanfare or announcement, just put them out there. We noticed it when we did our weekly check of the 777 Sale, but we never got an email or saw any kind of actual announcement and official release of the names. They just started using them and left it for us to figure out.

Here’s a list of the old and new names:

One of the reasons I saw was that they want people to be able to tell where the resorts are. Well, I don’t think it takes much brainpower to figure out that Sandals Royal Curacao just might be in … well, CURACAO! The same with Sandals Royal Bahamanian just MIGHT be in The Bahamas! Anyone that is familiar with Sandals probably knows where they are and isn’t in any way shape or form confused by the original names. I guess it all has to do with their desire to expand outside of the Caribbean.

What they did do was get rid of the two “Grande” resorts. Sandals Grande Antigua is now just Sandals Antigua, and Sandals Grande St. Lucian is now Sandals St. Lucia Grand Bay or just Sandals Grand Bay. I guess that this resort used to be Grande, but now it’s just located on Grand Bay.

Then there’s the change in Royal. Sandals Royal Caribbean was changed to Sandals Caribbean Cay shortly before Sandals announced their “relationship” with Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines. When that name change was made, some people saw the business deal coming. But now they’ve also removed two more of the other “Royals”. Sandals Royal Curacao is now just Sandals Curacao; and Sandals Royal Bahamian is now just Sandals Bahamas Nassau, or just Sandals Nassau. Sandals Royal Plantation is now Sandals Jamaica Royal Plantation or just Sandals Royal Plantation, so it at least kept its Royal name. And Sandals Royal Barbados is still Royal, too. I’m not sure why they got to remain Royal, but there is a Sandals Barbados, so I guess it kept Royal Barbados to tell the two apart. There has been talk of building another Sandals Dunn’s River and calling it Sandals Royal Dunn’s River, but now I’m not so sure that they won’t come up with something different to avoid the “Royal”.

Poor Sandals La Toc in St. Lucia. They lost their “Regency” status. I’m not sure what that meant, but now it’s just Sandals St. Lucia La Toc or Sandals La Toc.

The two Beaches resorts made out better. Beaches Negril is still Beaches Negril or Beaches Jamaica Negril. And the only change to Beaches Turks & Caicos is that they changed the ampersand into an “and”. I guess that’s how the country’s name usually appears so Sandals finally “made it right” for them.

I’ve changed all the logos on the 777 Sale to the new ones, but I haven’t really figured out what to do with the Decoder Ring section that I have. I don’t know that I want to track all the changes, but I don’t want to lose their original names, either. I’ll have to give it some more thought.

The best part is that they didn’t send any notice to Travel Agents so we’d know what was going on. In an ideal world they should have sent us an email at the same time that they updated their 777 sale. That way we couldn’t spill the beans early, but we’d at least know about it at the same time as everyone else found out.