Sandals Resorts Looking To Build 3 to 4 Hotels A Year. Biggest Expansion In Its History

Sandals CEO Adam Stewart told Bloomberg News that the hotel chain is on an expansion drive and is currently seeking help from international banks to finance this growth.

Based on the Bloomberg report here are some highlights (figures in US$). They are

• spending $375 million to build a 580-room Barbados hotel
• spending around $500 million to construct a resort on the island of Tobago in the southern Caribbean
• operating 23 resorts across seven Caribbean islands
• currently in talks with Deutsche Bank and others to raise money
• the biggest private employer in Jamaica
• targeting the luxury vacation market and the average daily rate across its portfolio of 6,000 rooms is around $550

“We’re open to taking on more debt to build more than one hotel at a time. We want to build three or four hotels a year,” Stewart said in a telephone interview. “We are trying to look for bigger capital to grow. We know exactly what to do and how to do it. But up until now we’ve been restricted by the balance sheet of regional banks.”